What The Walls Had To Say
by SamDeanWinchester7
Summary: Lance and Keith are back on earth looking for an apartment, they run into two other men, Dean and Castiel, also looking for an apartment, neither of them can technically afford the apartment they both want to get, and after some debate, they decide to get it together. some Klance, mostly fluffy crack, angst, cuteness, family moments, you name it, it's in here, we've got ducklings!
1. Chapter 1

"What about this one?" Lance waves his hand to the door, Keith hesitates but opens the door as Lance elaborates. "It has two bedrooms, a kitchen, a small laundry room, one bathroom, one half bathroom with laundry machines in it, and a medium sized living space. What do you think?" Keith turns in a circle looking around.

"I think it's cool." he says.

"But?" Lance prompts. He steps next to him and nudges him with his elbow.

"I just can't believe that everyone else wanted to stay in space. Hunk on the Balmara half the time, the other with Shay and their cooking empire. Shiro is patrolling the universe with his husband, Pidge and Matt are doing this cool space rangers thing and I just, I know my mom wanted me to stay in space with her, but I missed earth. And-"

"And you don't like to listen to people when they tell you what to do." Lance smirk and Keith rolls his eyes at the darker boy.

"I was going to say, I didn't want you to be left alone on earth. Who knows what kind of trouble you'll get into." Keith walks down the hall to the bed rooms. Each one has a queen sized bed a closet a nightstand and a desk. "How much is this?" Keith asks.

"Uh, well you know, it costs as much as any other apartment." Lance lies. Keith gives him the look that says 'yeah right, tell the truth' Lance lets out a low breath. "It's somewhere around like 20,000 a month." Lance rubs the back of his neck.

"Lance you know we can't pay for that." Keith says turning to him. "We need to go to the next one." he says, but before they even reach the end of the hall the real estate agent that showed them in enters with two men.

"With two master bedrooms." she finishes her sentence. The shorter one stops her from continuing to ask;

"But how much is it?" he asks. Her smile wavers, she likes to wait till after they see it to tell them the price. Waste people's time.

"Around 20,000 a month." she says not losing the happy note to her voice. The taller one shakes his head to the other as to say no, then says;

"No Cas. we can't do that. We'd only have enough for like, half of that."

"But, Dean, it's so perfect, it has a washing machine!"

"There's laundromats for that." the one known as 'Dean' says.

"Excuse me," Lance walks up to him. "I couldn't help but overhear your conversation, my friend and I seem to have the same problem." Keith shakes his head moving his hand across his throat trying to get him to stop talking to these people Cas smiled brightly, turning to Dean.

"We can all get it together."

Dean immediately shook his head violently, but Cas wasn't paying attention.

"That's what I was thinking!" Lance smiled wildly, Keith slapped himself in the face and shook his head.

"Lance, that means we have to share a room with someone." Keith places a hand on his shoulder.

"Well this guy seems cool enough." Lance teases gesturing to Cas.

Dean had gone pale at the mention of sharing rooms. "No. No no no no no."

"Dean." Cas started.

"I'm not done yet. No no no no no."

"Or two of us can use the couches," Lance shrugs his shoulders. "or the floor of the bed room, I could always use the bathtub."

"Lance last time you did that I had to save you from drowning." Keith deadpans crossing his arms over his chest.

Dean, who had been doing the same, immediately uncrossed his own. Not wanting to match this "emo ass kid". He's not a kid.

"Sounds like a plan." Cas concludes with a happy grin.

"Not a plan. Bad plan. Worse than your last plan, and that was pretty damn bad." Dean says, quickly waving his hands

"Please Keith?" Lance turns around to beg his friend and comrade. Keith looks at him for a moment, holding his ground, But then he caves.

"Fine, only if they agree." Keith rolls his eyes and looks away from the large blue puppy eyes that belong to the boy on his knees in front of him.

Cas nods enthusiastically, but Dean turns to walk out. "I'm sleeping in the alley out back."

"But Dean, it's snowing," Cas grabs his shoulder to turn him around. This time Cas tries out the puppy eyes Lance had just demonstrated. "please Dee?" he falls on one knee.

Dean's shoulders tense. Pulling the Sammy card, of all things... "Not cool, Cas. Not cool at all."

"Is that a yes?" Lance asks offering his puppy eyes to the mix.

All Dean says in response is "Son of a bitch." Keith smiles, he had a feeling this was actually going to work out for the better. Even if they couldn't really talk about their space adventures or anything, they were going to make a great group of friends.

"I've never understood why you say that, Dean," Cas says, cocking his head. "What do male puppies have to do with anything?"

Keith just rolls his eyes and turns to the real estate agent to make the offer.

****Time skip brought to you by: 90's Voltron!****

"You know, Dean," Cas says, looking at him across the table they're sharing with Keith and Lance. "That really is unhealthy for you."

Dean glances up from his plate of bacon. "Do I look like I give a shit?"

Keith looks at Lance about to ask if he can get a plate of bacon, but Lance shuts him down just as his mouth opens

"No." he says cutting into his pancake. Keith pouts.

"Says the guy who bought a cow at a space mall," Keith mumbles before getting elbowed by his friend in the ribs. "Ow, what was that for?"

Cas just says, "Space malls are dangerous." Dean chokes on his bacon.

"You mean that wasn't a joke?" his eyes are wide.

Keith and Lance exchange glances. Keith didn't think they could hear him. "Uh…." they both say

"So have you been to one?" Lance asks leaning forward.

"No, I just see everything I want to from heaven." Keith just happened to be taking a drink and spat it out onto Lance.

"CAS!" Dean shouts, "what the hell is the matter with you?!"

"So let me ask a quick question," Lance places his elbow on the table and does a sassy hand, ignoring the fact he has milk on his shirt now. "your telling me, you have seen a space mall….. from heaven?" he asks both Keith and Dean's eyes are wide open.

"Well, of course." Cas says like it's the most natural thing in the world, while Dean waves his hands frantically to stop him. "I'm an angel of the Lord." Dean puts his head down on the table in defeat.

"I'm a paladin of Voltron… the blue paladin to be exact, and Keith is the red paladin, leader of Voltron."

"Bullshit." Dean says. "I used to watch that TV show."

"Lance, would you stop blabbing." Keith tries to hide his face with his hands.

"Yeah, that show was based off of us. Well kind of, it's complicated."Lance says tailing off, he was about to go on a full rant, but Keith's hand on his shoulder stops him.

"Wait, how can you belong to something that doesn't exist?" Keith turns his attention to Cas.

Getting into this whole, 'my job is better than your job' thing, Cas says, "Dean hunts demons and ghosts and vampires and werewolves and-"

"Cas. Shut up." Dean says.

"Keith is part Galra and is a member of the Blade of Marmora and-" Lance tries to contest in the 'my boyfriend is better than your boyfriend battle.

"LANCE, WOULD YOU SHUT YOUR CAKE HOLE?!" Keith shouts at him

"Dean's the Righteous Man from the ancient legend, and he killed Azazel."

"Keith traveled through the quantum abyss and lived there with his mom for two years but it was only two months for us."

"Dean was tortured in hell for four months, but for him it was forty years."

Dean went white, then got up.

"I'll see you guys at home." He walked out without another word.

"Dean." Keith got up followed by Cas and then Lance to follow him out being only like two blocks away from the apartment they had all only just moved into and never slept a night in, dean broke into a full on run and was out of sight when the other three reached the sidewalk.

"Follow that man!" Lance shouted pointing in the direction of the apartment in an overly dramatic way, but lucky for him no one really paid him any attention other than his two friends. They all three speed walked down the walk.

They reached the door and it was locked, Cas fumbled with his keys and opened the door to see the lights were still off, but the T.V. glowed with an old cartoon

They moved in side to see Dean sitting in the couch looking sad, but mad, but about to cry, but also not gonna let a single tear run down his check.

"We need pie, we need beer, and we need to hurry." Cas said pushing Lance out the door to drive him closing the door trapping Keith with this supposed demon hunter. He stood there awkwardly for a moment before walking over and sitting next to him.

Looking closer Keith could see the cartoon he was watching was Scooby Doo. An old favorite of both these adult males. Dean shifts his position.

"This was my favorite episode to watch." he mutters running a hand through his hair.

"Which one is this?" Keith asks crossing his legs beneath him to get comfortable.

"Jeepers it's the creeper, the one where they're going to a barnyard dance and stuff." Dean mumbles

"That was like my favorite episode man, Velma was always my favorite character." Keith admits with a small smile on his face.


	2. We Need Pie

****Time skip sponsored by: The Winchester Brothers.****

"What kind of pie do we need?" Lance asks as they pull into the parking lot of the local grocery store.

"Pie." Cas says as they jump out of the car and run into the store.

"Yeah... But what flavor of pie." Lance says as the reach the bakery.

"Uh, pie flavored pie?" Cas starts to frantically search through the pies stacking some on the floor

"H-How about this one, its blueberry." Lance picks one up and looks at the packaging.

"No, he says that's least best." Cas throws a pie and Lance dives to catch the pie.

"CAS, YOU CAN'T JUST THROW PIES!" Lance puts the pie back, "how's apple pie?" he asks.

"Perfect!" Cas jumps up and they abandon all the pies only taking the one, the run down a few aisles and find the beer. Lance grabbed the first case he could and they ran to the checkouts. Lance has to stop Cas from leaving the store without paying.

They then rush home as fast as they can. The stumble out of their car Cas holding the pie, Lance with the beer.

When they get inside, they find Dean and Keith commiserating together.

"You know," Dean says, "I'd say I wish I could have my childhood back, but I never really had one in the first place. So I wish I could've had one at all."

"Oh no." Cas says. "Keith let him get going. He never talks about these things, but if he starts, he's not gonna stop for a while. It's like a dam breaking."

"I mean." Keith starts to say, "my mom left when I was only one and my dad died in a house fire trying to save me and I moved from foster home to foster home." Keith says with a sad face.

Dean just freezes. "House fire?" he practically squeaks after a second, eyes never leaving the TV screen.

"Yeah, and I was only left with a knife from my mother to guide me through my life. When I got into the garrison I meet Shiro and then he had to just go and get kidnapped by the Galra." Keith summarizes some more of his history.

"You know? This might actually be healthy for them to talk about this." Lance says, Cas nods in agreement

"Wait... aren't you Galra?" Dean then asks. Keith nods.

"Yeah, my life sucks, after we went into space I found out that I was part Galra and I found my mom. Oh and Shiro," Keith says. "but we found Shiro before we went into space, like less than a day before." Lance had been there, and Keith was confusing him.

"That's rough man, I mean I was a demon for a while, that was rough." Dean says thinking back to not actually that long ago.

"Sounds bad." Keith nods, while they were talking Cas and Lance took the liberty of cutting the pie and putting it on plates and opening some beers. They walked into the living space to hand it to them, but Keith keeps talking. "I mean Shiro was basically my brother, and then he got replaced by an evil clone and I had to like kill him and then take the real him life force from the head of Voltron and put it his evil clone body to bring him back." he says without pausing.

"Do you want the pie and beer or not Keith." Lance waves it in front of him

"Yeah, Dean. Do you want it or not?" Cas follows Lance's lead in waving it in front of his face.

Dean grabs the pie distractedly and continues talking. "I don't think I could ever kill my brother, clone or not. I'd rather die. But seriously, house fire? What is it with everyone and dying in 'house fires'? Though, was yours actually a house fire? 'Cause mine wasn't, the cops just said so."

"What do you mean 'it wasn't', what was it?" Keith asks taking the plate and beer from Lance as well. Lance and Cas look at each other and shrug, they pop a squat on the floor and watch it unfold

"It was a demon." Dean says matter of factly. "A demon plastered my mom to the ceiling, cut her stomach open, and lit her on fire right above my baby brother's crib."

"Oh..." Keith says carefully, "Um, that's intense. So, how you holding up there man?"

"Fine, now that we've killed the son of a bitch. It's really okay, it was a long time ago." It's obvious Dean is lying.

"I'm not stupid, Dean. Don't lie to me. I can see through it like glass, come one, how you holding up."

"I just… never mind, it's dumb." Dean looks away, blushing.

"No, it's not, emotions aren't dumb, that's one of the first things I learned from my time in the Quantum abyss, every three, or so, minutes or so it would show my mom and I one of our memories, it was hard, especially when she saw my memory of my father's grave. But you need to talk about it."

"Promise you ain't gonna laugh at me?" He looked all of five years old, eyes big in his pale face. Keith's heart renched at the sight, it hurt his soul to see someone who was supposed to be so old and unsure, have such big insecurities.

"I promise. Ask Lance, I don't laugh." he says

Dean sighs. "I just miss the little things, you know? The stuff that nobody else would think is important. How Mom would sing me lullabies, tell me angels were watching over me, make me soup when I was sick, and pie when I was happy. Having a place to live, like a permanent place. You know, all that stupid stuff that doesn't mean anything. At least, that's what Dad always said."

"That all sounds so amazing, I never had anything like that. I'm sorry you went through the things you went through but you need to accept that it happened and you can't change it, and then move on, ready to make more memories." Keith takes a swig of his beer.

A lone tear slides down Dean's face, and he brushes it away impatiently. "Shit, I didn't wanna cry. I'm too old to cry."

"Your not 'too old' for anything, I mean, we were just watching Scooby Doo for god's sake, get some perspective!" Keith tries to lighten the mood slightly.

Dean laughs a little. "Try telling that to my dad, man. He thought I was too old to cry when I was four. He used to yell at me for it."

"That's just not right." Lance jumped in shaking his head, his comment startled the two men and they both look at their blue eyed friends sitting and watching them talk.

"It was fine." Dean said after a second. "He needed me to handle everything. Be strong for everybody. I couldn't do that if I was busy crying for my mommy like a baby. I mean, what would've happened to Sammy if I went to pieces like he did?" Dean slapped a hand over his mouth. "I - I didn't mean - it's not like he really -" He fell silent.

"Who's Sammy?" Lance asks softly trying to break the silence.

Dean's face was impossibly sad. If pain could become a person, that was what it would look like. "My little brother."

"Did something happen to him?" Lance keeps talking.

Dean looks down at his hands. "He - well - it was just supposed to be a regular hunt, y'know? Nothing serious. I mean, we've handled wendigos before. It should've been in and out. But, see, we didn't know that… well, that there were three of them instead of just one." He turned and looked out the window. "I tried to save him. I really did. But… well…"

"Dean, don't blame yourself." Cas says as a warning.

Dean whips around to face him, his eyes blazing, tears falling thick and fast now. "And why the hell shouldn't I? It was all my damn fault. He was _my_ responsibility. I was supposed to keep him safe. It's been my job his whole life. And I let him down." Dean ran a hand through his hair. "I tried to make another deal for his life, and you know what that demon told me? It told me that my soul wasn't worth it. That it was too damaged, and they wouldn't trade it for Sammy. I don't know what I did to make my soul worthless, but I did something, and whatever it was, it's why I couldn't bring him back. Don't you tell me whose fault it is. 'Cause it's mine." Dean's shoulders start shaking with the sobs, but he refuses to acknowledge that he's crying, just looking away again.

"I know we've talked about personal space and I still don't understand it." Cas shout before jumping up and hugging Dean with all his might. Lance soon follows suit.

Dean sits there, rigid, not sure what to do with this much affection. He's not used to it, ut finally he just carefully pushed them away.

"Quit it. I don't deserve that. Even the damn well demons know I'm worthless. Why can't you people get it through your thick skulls?"

"Dean." Keith starts to say. He smiles slightly thinking about what he's about to say. "Look at your pie, now ask your pie if it thinks your worthless. Does your pie think your worthless? No. No, it doesn't." Keith says poking at his own pie. "And you know what, that's all that really matters, is what your pie thinks of you, not me, not Lance not Cas, not the Demon, just the Pie."

Dean laughs shakily. "You know, I used to say shit like that to myself all the time when I was kid, when I managed to steal pie for myself. I would tell myself that pie's safe, 'cause pie won't judge you. Pie is happiness, not years of self hatred and family dysfunction. I thought maybe I was just crazy."

"Well there you go, Pie is your friend. And you know what else?" Lance says. "We are your friends."

Dean holds up a hand. "No chick flick moments."

Cas cocks his head again. "Chick flick? What does flicking baby birds have to do with anything?"

"Quiznack, you know what we're gonna do now right?" Lance smiles like some kind of crazy clown, Keith looks like he wants to die because he does know what Lance is gonna do now.

"What?" Dean and Cas say at the same time at both what he's gonna do and the swear word that he use.

"Some kind of wonderful. Where did we put the DVD Keith." Lance jumps up and starts to search through the box of DVD's Keith stands and Makes Dean stand up as well.

"Let's go eat our pie on the back porch." Dean gladly follows to leave the two blue eyed boys to watch their chick flick.


	3. Coffee Table

****Time skip brought to you by: bromance****

Dean rolls over and falls onto the floor. "Well, good morning to you too, floor." he grumbles. Slowly he sits up, rubbing the side of his head, then freezes. Cas isn't there.

Immediately, his brain goes into overdrive. Demons killed him, angels killed him, something, anything, killed him.

Lance. Never did trust that overly-happy son of a bitch.

Dean gets up, grabs his gun from under the pillow, and leaves the room to look for Cas in just his boxers and Sam's old sweatshirt.

He knocks on Keith's door. "Keith, are you awake? Keith. Keith, open the damn door."

"What the Hell, it's like seven in the morning." Keith opens the door holding his purple-ish gray blade in his hand, his hair sticking up in all directions and eyes still half lidded. "I mean yeah, we both live here, but what the hell."

Dean looks at Keith's knife, then at his gun. "I win. Now where's Cas?" Keith looks up at Deans matted hair and then down at his boxers decorated with teddy bears holding out their arms for hugs.

"I'm sorry Dean, but I can't take you seriously when your hair looks like a hedgehog and your wearing those boxers. Find Cas yourself."

Keith starts to close the door, but Dean sticks out his foot to stop him. "Look, just answer one question. Does Lance have an angel blade?"

"You know, i'm pretty sure the sharpest thing Lance McClain owns is his pair of blue lion slippers." Keith leans one arm on the door way as he talks, he looks at Dean with his sleepy "I don't really care, but I'm gonna humor you" face.

Dean knows when somebody doesn't care what he's saying, after all, he saw that look on his dad's face every time he opened his mouth, but he's too worried about Cas to care. "Then where the hell is he?"

"They stayed up all last night watching chick flicks, remember? Lance never came to bed either, we can check the family room." Keith grumbles shoving his knife in the back of his flannel sleep pants and leads Dean down the hall to the living space. They see Lance asleep strewn across the couch and Cas leaning up against it on the floor, his head tilted back in sleep.

Keith relaxes, thinking nothing's wrong, but Dean looks like he might just pass out. "Cas doesn't sleep." he says shortly, grabbing salt out of his pocket and throwing it at Lance. "Either he's a demon, or just a real asshole." Lance jolts awake from being pelted by Salt

"What the Quiznack man?" he sits up trying to brush himself off, Cas lifts his head and yawns really big. "Is this… Salt?" Lance asks

"Why do you have salt in your hoodie pocket?" Keith asks looking at Dean, Dean looks extremely relieved that Cas is alive and awake. "And what do you mean, Cas doesn't sleep?" Keith asks running a hand through his hair trying to tame the mess that it was.

"It wards off demons and most spirits." Dean says like it's the most natural thing in the world right as Cas says, "I usually just watch Dean sleep, since angels don't need to."

"Right, I mean chick flicks make me fall asleep to, so I don't blame you." Keith shrugs with a smirk.

"Hey, their not that bad, we had just watched three in a row, my girl is a very entertaining movie, we only fell asleep right as the credits started to roll." Lance says as he stands and brushes the rest of the salt out of his clothes.

Dean looks at the screen with the still rolling credits. "So your telling me you've only been asleep for like five minutes?" he points his thumb to the TV.

"Is that important information?" Cas asks. "I wasn't aware humans timed how long they sleep. Is there somewhere that you write it down?"

Dean just shakes his head and turns to leave, but a small box falls out of his pocket, and he freezes. As Lance starts to explain to Cas that some people have sleep logs and stuff, Keith bends over and picks it up.

"Whats this?" he asks stopping the conversation between Lance and Cas. Cas looks over to the red velvety box that held a silver ring with a pointed oval shaped diamond embedded into it with tiny black gems surrounding it.

"That was for Lisa wasn't it?" he asks softly. Keith looks down at the small red box in his head realizing it was a ring box and looked back up to Dean.

"Who's Lisa?"

For just a second, Dean's frozen, then swings a fist towards Keith's jaw. Keith grabs his fist with one hand and forearm with the other and flips Dean up over his shoulder and onto the coffee table, which breaks. After lying there, stunned, for a second, Dean just rolls over so they can't see his face, resting his head on his arm. "Sorry." he says quietly, his voice muffled.

"Dude, I paid fifteen bucks for that at a yard sail man, I loved that coffee table." Lance pouts picking up a piece of what was left of it.

"No one gives a fuck." Dean says again, he then lifts his other hand and points to Cas without looking. "Remind me not to get on his bad side." he then points to Keith without looking.

"That'll be hard, he only has one side, he's actually a real softy." Lance teases. Keith gives him his "what the fuck" face and Lance laughs.

Cas calmly stands up and grabs the ring box from Keith. "If you want to discuss this, do it with Dean later. For now, we have to do something productive with our lives." His face lights up. "We could go over to the park and find some bees."

"Why?" Keith asks bluntly. "And Dean, get off the floor, we need to clean that up."

Dean rolls over a few times so he's not on top of the table anymore, but stays on the ground. Cas smiles. "Bees are incredible beings. We can learn a lot from them. Besides, it's my weird safe place thing."

"It's always good to have a safe place." Lance comments.

"You know," Keith starts getting into one of his 'strange overly knowledge random subjects' rants, "It's actually physically impossible for bees to fly, the size of their wing compared to the size of their body makes it impossible so they have to flap their wings twice as fast in order to achieve flight-" Lance jumps up and slaps his hand over Keith "emo ass" mouth.

"That's enough Keith, now go put on your Hot Topic merch and get ready for the day." Keith just nods and goes back to his room. Dean sits up and looks after Keith as he closes the door to his room, then looks at Lance.

"How the fuck did you do that? I could never get Sam to quit."

Cas grabs Dean's arm and pulls him up, putting the ring box back in his pocket. "You know, Dean, I understand that these objects have sentimental value," He gestures to Dean's hoodie, the box, the amulet, and his father's wedding ring on his right hand, "but do you ever think that maybe you just need to let go?"

For just a second, it looked like Dean was going to punch Cas too, but instead he just turned around and stalked back into his room. Lance looked to Cas and smiled wearily.

"I've got to go get ready for the day to, you might want to do the same." Lance says, he then walks down the hall and opens his bedroom door, only to shut it right away and go the his real bed room door, shutting that one quickly after opening it as well, followed by as 'what the hell Lance, knock next time.'

Cas looks down at his clothes. He knew 'getting ready' was that weird thing Dean did every morning, but he'd never done it himself. Maybe it would be fun. "Dean!" he called. "How do I get ready?"


	4. Knife Shoes

****Time skip sponsored by: hand grenades****

"I remember one time Veronica took me out for a day it was so fun." Lance continues to tell stories from his childhood to Keith as he tries to pour an entire sugar packet into his coffee. Keith grabs his hand and makes him stop. "We went to the movies and then she took me ice-skating." Keith interjects.

"Wait, what's that?" Keith asks as Cas and Dean head over from paying for their coffee, Dean is in the middle of pulling a silver flask from his back pocket as he sits down. Lance turns to Cas with a horrified expression.

"Cas, Keith has never been ice skating." Lance exclaims slamming his hands on the table. Cas looks up at him with a curious look on his face.

"Ice… Skating?" he asks tilting his head. "Ice causes hypothermia. Why would you want to do anything on ice? It's sounds incredibly stupid."

"Well, you're not wrong, but it's super fun." Lance says.

Cas's face lights up when he realizes he has something to contribute to the conversation. "Dean does stupid stuff 'cause it's fun all the time."

Dean freezes and looks up in the act of pouring the mystery liquid into his coffee while everyone looks at him.

"Is that… whiskey?" Keith asks. Dean's eyes widen and he dumps the rest in.

"Not my fault it's only eight in the morning, life shouldn't start until well after nine." he defends as he swirls his mug before taking a large swig.

"DEAN." Lance interjects grabbing all their attention again. "We need to take these pour souls Ice skating!" he says waving his arms around dramatically. "TODAY!" he adds

Dean shrugs like it's no big deal. "Never been." He'd always wanted to go, but never had the guts to ask his dad.

"That's it, everybody up, to the car." Lance stands up. Keith stands and grabs their car keys to their Red 1999 Toyota corolla.

"Driver!" Keith calls lifting his coffee with him. Dean realizing it first call first serve then stands and calls out:

"Shotgun." he says taking another swig of his concoction. Lance grins tugging Cas up by his arm and towards the door.

"Back seat with Cas." they storm out the door coffee in hand and then climb into the car into their called seats. Keith plugs in his phone to turn on his playlist for the drive.

"Where are we going?" he asks Lance before turning on his music.

"Down to main and fifth." he says overly excited as he buckles his seat belt. Safety first right? Keith nods and presses play and some loud drummer emo rock band starts to blare through the car.

"Turn that down you emo ass mullet!" Lance says.

Dean just gives the Keith's phone a weird look. "The hell is that?"

"Simple plan, shut up." he says turning it up.

"Keiiiiiiiiiiiiith, turn it off!" Lance complains covering his ears with his hands.

"Driver picks the music, back seat shuts their cake hole!" Keith shouts over the music.

Dean puts his feet up on the dashboard. "I like this guy. He says cake-hole, since pie holes should never be shut with anything, but pie."

Lance keeps his hands over his ears the whole way to the ice skating rink, Keith doesn't need more direction, seeing as there is a large sign with swoopy letters that reads Ice Skating rink. They pull into the parking lot three songs later and climb out of the car leaving their empty coffee cups in the car.

"This looks fun." Keith says sarcastically rolling his eyes.

Dean is staring around, his green eyes wide with childish wonder. Even though he's trying to hide it, you can tell that he's more happy and excited than he's been in a long time. They start to walk in and Lance leads them up to the counter. After they place their order for shoes, Lance turns around with a big grin.

"Who's ready to have the best time of their lives?" Lance smiles even bigger placing his hands on his hips. He turns back around when no one answers him and grabs the ice skates the lady placed on the counter for them."here you go." Lance hands them out. He holds out the last pair to Keith who only stairs at them with wide eyes. "Dude, take them" Lance says.

"Oh my Vrepit sa." Keith murmurs. Lance looks at him like he's crazy

"What?" Lance whispers back to him thinking he might have some sort of trauma with these things.

"Oh… my… Vrepit sa." Keith says a bit louder, grabbing the attention of Cas and Dean who look over.

"What the hell does that mean?" Dean asks looking as Keith won't take the skates.

"OH MY VREPIT SA!" he almost shout and look up to Lance with a big smile, he spins around to look at Dean with a crazy smile, Dean doesn't know if he should be scared or amused. "Their KNIFE shoes!"

Dean's face relaxes into an easy grin. "Yeah, they're great for killing people, if you have any on hand."

"Yeah." Cas agrees. "There was this one guy that Dean-"

Dean puts a hand over his mouth to shut him up. "Cas, remember how after the personal space discussion, we had the appropriate conversation topics for public places discussion?" Cas nods and Dean takes his hand away.

"Yes, knife shoes Keith." Lance says turning his friend back around. "Now put them on your knife feet." Lance shoves them into Keith's chest.

"You've got a point." Dean says, pulling four different knives out of the boots he'd set on the floor and transferring them to his ice skates.

Lance looks at him with wide eyes and then looks back to the counter where the lady had left promptly after giving them their shoes. Then Keith says;

"Dude, their already knife shoes, you don't need to add more knifes." Keith says kicking off his own normal shoes. Dean look up at him after tying up one of his shoes.

"You can never have too many knives." he says in reply. Keith thinks on it for a minute before nodding in agreement and sits on the floor to put the skates on. Lance follows suit and soon they find themselves about to walk onto the ice. Keith pauses.

"Does there happen to be a body of water under this?" he asks tapping the ice with his skate before going on it, Lance turns to him with a playful grin.

"No silly, now come one." Lance grabs Keith's hands and pulls him onto the ice with him. Keith has a terrified expression as he does so. "Relax." Lance says moving to hold Keith forearms.

Meanwhile Cas is staring down at the ice worriedly. "Are you sure this is structurally sound?"

"Would you move your feathery ass already?" Dean says, shoving Cas forward, and he promptly face-plants on the ice.

A little boy stops to stare at Cas, then looks up at Dean. "Aren't you a little old to be ice skating?"

Ignoring the fact his dad would've said something similar, Dean snaps, "Go get your mommy and take a flying leap, you son of a bitch."

The kid runs off, and Cas slowly stands up. "Dean, you should not have said that."

Shrugging, Dean steps onto the ice. "Hey!" he says, catching Lance and Keith's attention as they go by. "Dad was wrong! This doesn't have to be gay at all!" Lance and Keith then exchange glances, Lance's checks turn a light shade of pink and he lets go of Keith's arms quickly. Keith then almost loses his balance and then sprawls out of control making Lance has to skate after him.

"Keith, spread your feet apart." Lance shouts skating after him as he waves his arms around to try and gain his balance back. Keith starts to slow down but Lance doesn't notice and runs into him sending them both to the ground.

Dean watches in amusement as they tumble over each other, landing with Keith sitting on top of Lances waist.

Dean starts laughing so hard he falls right over, but he doesn't care and just sits on the ice giggling like a little kid. Then suddenly freezes and his face goes white.

"Dean, are you alright?" Cas asks, looking down at him worriedly.

Dean quickly pulls himself to his feet and says, "I need some air." He leaves the ice rink faster than you would think was possible for someone who'd never been ice skating before, but being a hunter, I suppose it makes sense.

"There's plenty of air in here!" Cas calls after him, waving his arms around in the quote-unquote "air". He then turns and heads for the two poor unfortunate souls who were still in a daze. But seeing as he didn't know how to skate, he tripped over the two after reaching them.

"Cas, that wasn't very angelic of you. " Lance snickers and Keith groans at his pun.

"It's not my fault they took my wings away from me. Now let's go after Dean. He never makes that face for no reason." so Lance being the only experienced skater helps them all get to their feet and of the ice. They go out to the car but Dean wasn't waiting there for them. They got in, this time shotgun being emptied, Keith set his empty boots in his seat for him. They then drove around a little and grabbed Lunch for the group.

They pulled into their parking space outside their apartment, when Keith opened his door they could hear Dean singing loud and off key.

"I'M ON THE HIGHWAY TO HELL!" They can hear him singing the guitar riffs in between the lyrics. "HIGHWAY TO HELL!"

"Dean, did you see something?" Cas asks.

"Lisebe." Dean slurs.

"Are you drunk?"

"Very."

"That fast? That's a record, even for you." then Lance buts in

"Who's Elisabeth?" Lance asks trying to figure out what Dean had said. Cas shakes his head and sighs.

"No, it's Lisa and Ben." he sighs.

"Lance," Keith says placing a hand on his shoulder, "remember Allura?" he says and Lance frowns at the ground.

"I'll go inside." he mumbles. Lance then walks up the stairs with Cas in toe and lunch in hand. Keith sits next to Dean on the front steep.

"Can I see the ring again?" he asks.

Dean silently hands it over.

"What happened?"

"Well…"

* * *

** ** hey guys, Sam here, just wanted to make sure you knew we are going to be posting a chapter about every week, sometimes more, please review and let us know what you like and don't like about our story, first person to review will get a shout out on the next chapter.**

**other then that, please have a myth-tastic day, piece out everybody ****


	5. Go fish & Cheese Graters

****Time skip brought to you by: Go Fish****

Cas and Lance sit cross-legged on the bed, playing go-fish.

"So, what's with Dean?" Lance asks.

"Dean has more demons than Hell." Cas says very seriously. Lance could tell he wasn't exaggerating.

"Well, that's heavy."

"Full house!" Cas shouts triumphantly, slapping his cards down.

"Cas, we're playing go-fish."

Cas tilts his head. "What's go-fish?"

"How can you not know what go-fish is?" Lance says, shocked.

"Dean only plays poker. Since you gave me five cards, I assumed we were playing five-card-stud." Cas honestly looks like a innocent child in his confusion.

Shaking his head, Lance decides they can get into explaining all the different card games later. Instead, he decides to ask the question that weighs more heavily on his mind. "What did you mean when you said they took your wings?"

"I fell from heaven." Cas says simply.

"Like Satan?"

Cas shrugs. "Not exactly, but if that is the closest thing you can understand, then I suppose it is close enough, but I didn't become the devil. I became human."

"I died once and Allura brought me back once." Lance tries to sympathise with Caas

"Who's Allura, she was a princess right?" Cas asks, Lance looks off into space as he thinks back.

"Yeah," Lance sighs "and she was beautiful. Should have known I didn't have a chance with her." he frowns. "She chose this evil son of the Galra Emperor over me. I mean she didn't know he was hiding a colonie of Alteas from her and feeding of their quinteceins at the time, she even killed him when she found out, but Keith-" Lance cuts himself off by shaking his head.

Cas decides to let it slide, having learned from Dean that sometimes people don't want to discuss it. "Dean left Lisa to protect her, but if you want the whole story, you'll have to ask him. I think it would be good for you two to have that conversation. I think you could really help each other."

"Maybe, should we go set the table for Lunch?" Lance asks sliding off the bed.

Cas shook his head. Looked like avoidance tactics were the same for everyone, they just made different suggestions. Lance thought about setting the table, Dean thought about violently murdering something. "Fine, we can come back to the cards later." He wanted to clean out all of Lance's cash. At least, that's how Dean always said it.

They head into the kitchen where Lance had set the Chinese take out and he started to place it onto four different plates. Cas took the liberty of putting the chopsticks on the plates and then putting the plates in the correct places at the table.

It wasn't long after that when Keith and Dean walked in to see Cas and Lance sitting down to eat.

"Were you gonna eat without me?" Keith accuses Lance with a playful glare. Lance holds his hands up in defense.

"What me? I would never!"

Dean looks like he's been crying, his eyes red, tear tracks still shining on his face. He's too tired to care whether or not they were eating without him, so he just sits down and stares at his plate. Cas looks at him with a worried stare and then Back at lance, he could tell Lance was avoiding talking about… whatever it was he was about to talk about before he had stopped himself.

"Well, didn't in you guys, I didn't pay for lunch so you could look at it." Keith says slightly annoyed.

Dean throws him a glance before shoving in one mouthful, then goes back to watching the food like it had the answer to the meaning of his life written across it.

"So." Lance tries to make some small talk. "What did you guys think of ice skating for the first time, I mean I know we weren't there for the longest time, but I thought it was fun."

"I think it was great, even if Dean did say things he shouldn't to that little kid." Cas said brightly. "And even if I did fall down. We should go again sometime." Lance notices a slight blush on Keith's face as he thinks back to the ice skating rink.

"Yeah, it was fun." Keith says as he puts more food in his mouth, how Keith could use chopsticks so well was beyond him. Lance had to rely on stabbing things and hoping that would work.

Dean just nodded his head like he wasn't really paying attention and absentmindedly stabbed the table with the chopstick so hard that the little wooden stick broke in half, now staring at the wall, his chin resting on his hand.

"Dean, are you alright?" Lance tried a different tactic.

"Just great." Dean said, almost sounding hysterical. "Never been better. I could skip and throw flowers around right now, if there was space. And flowers. I feel like going to church and singing hymns."

"You know I think I could help with that, I mean we don't have a coffee table any more and their might be some dandelions in the front." Lance joked.

Dean laughed at that, even though it still sounded a little off. "I love dandelions. They're my favorite. I don't care if everyone says they're weeds."

"I know, its so dumb, have you ever peeled their stems like string cheese and put them in cold water? It's super cool." Lance was now talking quickly with excitement.

"Sammy and I used to chase each other with them, trying to draw yellow lines on the other person. He always gave them to me for Brother's Day." Dean smiled gently at the memory.

"Brothers day?" Lance cocked an eyebrow, he doesn't recall such a day. He was sure he would have heard of such a day, having three or so brothers and all.

"Well," Dean blushed in embarrassment. "We couldn't exactly celebrate Mother's Day or anything, so we gave each other stuff for Brother's Day instead. We sorta… made it up."

"Oh." Lance says looking down at his plate, he couldn't help but feel he was really bad at making conversation, he just always happened to bring up bad memories in people. But he couldn't help it either. He knew it wasn't healthy to think like that, but that was something he couldn't help either.

Cas, sensing the tension in the room, said the first thing that popped into his head. "Cheese graters would make good Christmas ornaments."

"What the hell Cas." Keith says around a mouth full of rice that he somehow managed to pick up with his chopsticks. It must have had something to do with his Korean heritage.

"Well, I've seen Christmas trees from heaven, even if I haven't seen them in person, and I noticed that all the ornaments are exceptionally shiny. Since cheese graters are sharp, they tend to be rather shiny, and half of them already have convenient handles to put them on the branches. They would make good Christmas ornaments." Cas says matter-of-factly.

"And that settles it, we will be going to get a Christmas tree after lunch. Hurry up and eat all of you hooligans." Lance gives up on chopsticks tossing them aside and lists his paper plate, folding it like a taco and pour it into his mouth.

Dean just stares at him for a second, then smiles. "Can we get a really big one?" Lance slides his empty plate back onto the table.

"HELL YEAH!" he shouts standing up. "Now I wanna see the inside of that amazing car of yours Dean Winchester, so were taking yours this time."

"As long as nobody hurts Baby, we're good." Dean smirks. "Otherwise, I'm taking their body somewhere nobody'll ever find it."

"You named your car… Baby?" Lance asks as thy finish up their lunches.

"Yep." Dean says without a moment of hesitation, Keith smirks and glances at Lance.

"Lance named his lion Blue, and he flirts with her all the time. It actually quite amusing, but then he had to go and take my red lion." he says picking up his empty plate and Lance's to throw in the trash.

"You have lions?" Cas asked, picturing a lion painted blue and another one painted red. "And you color coded them?"

"No… Not exactly, you see there are five lions that can transform into the defender of the universe. The blue lion, the red lion, the yellow lion, the green lion, and the black lion. And for your information Keith, I only took the red lion when Shiro went missing and you took the black lion. And then you left." Lance pauses crossing his arms "and you joined the Blade of Marmora. So don't act like I went and did something wrong." he nudges Keith as he passes.

Dean looks between the two of them. "You really are from that damn show. Shit, I thought you were just messing with me."

"And you just went with it." Keith points out. "Come on, lets go get us a tree." he says and they all then head for the door.


	6. Christmas Tree's

****Time skip sponsored by: Bobby…****

"So this is Baby." Dean says proudly once they're all in the car, Keith in shotgun this time, Lance and Cas once again in the back. "Watch the leather." He turns the key and pulls out into the street. AC-DC's _Thunderstruck_ comes blasting out of the radio. "And always remember that you aren't doing music right if you can't feel the bass in the door."

"I agree to the fullest extent." Keith says barely being heard over the music. Lance and Cas look at each other and just laugh that their friends are getting along so well, dare to say better then they did. Cas and Lance made small talk about the different card game that existed on the drive, and only stopped when the loud music did as they pulled into the tree farm.

"Dean," Cas said as they started roaming the aisles of trees, "are you aware of how many laws you broke on the way here? You were at least twenty miles an hour above the speed limit, according to the sign we passed, and you took those corners so quickly, and I'm pretty sure that lane we were in a minute ago really wasn't ours."

Dean just smirks and says, "So?" Keith smiles and Lance checks the price tag on one of the trees. He smiles at the low price since it's so close to Christmas.

"Just remember guys, the tree has to fit in the house." Lance says as Dean looks up at one that is taller than the two story apartment they lived in.

"I didn't even know they sold Christmas trees this big." Dean says. "You know, to people who don't live in the White House. We always had one that was more this size." He points to the little three foot tree next to it. "You know, when we managed to steal one at all."

"You just had to go and make it all sad and emo didn't you. This is why you and Keith are friends isn't it." Lance eyes a tree that's more or less perfect in his eyes Keith rolls his eyes and checks the price tag on the tree Lance was looking at.

Dean once again goes red with embarrassment and shoves his hands in his pockets. "Sorry. I'll shut up now. Pick whatever tree you want."

"No, I didn't' mean it like that, you get to help us pick it out, I mean we can always get a really big one like that and have it the front yard, but I feel like we might be violating some kind of rule at our apartment, but you know what it would be fun to see what they would say about it, and we can get one for inside to. We can get both." Lance tries really hard to mend the wound he just created. Once again, ruining everything he had worked so hard to create. He was slightly desperate to have a bond with Dean, Keith had gotten so close to him so quickly.

Dean's eyes widened slightly. "Two whole Christmas trees? You've got money for two whole Christmas trees? I've never had that much money in my whole damn life!" then he froze, realizing he'd sounded all emo and sad again. "I mean - um - sure, whatever." He looked down at his feet and kicked at the snow.

"Yeah, we can get both, their on sail, seeing as it's only like a week or so before Christmas and all." Lance double checks the prices. "But we need to get the really big one and the small one. Not the medium one." he says hoping Dean will be OK with that.

Dean nods, knowing a peace offering when he sees one, and decides to make a peace offering of his own. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out his wallet, grabs a few bills out of it and hands them to Lance. "For the trees." Lance looks down and sees that it's all of six bucks. He looks back up at Dean.

"That's all I got, man." Dean says apologetically.

"No it's fine, thanks it means a lot." Lance takes the offered money and hands back half of it. "But that's all you owe me." Lance smiles at him. Lance was told he was good at getting people to like him, and it was true, but the sad truth was, he was only good at getting certain people to like him. Emo kids were really hard to win over, it took like five years with Keith, and he still hasn't managed it all the way.

Dean stares at the money in his hand for a second, not used to being given back anything when he offered something, then put it back in his wallet. "O - okay." he said uncertainty. Lance nods, then goes to find the man to help them get them tied to the car and pay for them, Cas follows close behind.

"Earlier, when we were playing cards, you started to say something about Keith." Cas says. "What about Keith?" Lance stays quiet for a moment, he then looks around to see if there is anyone that can here, there was no one, he stops walking so he can talk.

"It's just, Keith helped me through being rejected by Allura, and we had this bonding moment and all, I mean he thinks I don't remember it but I do. I was just sacred, I didn't know why I had these feelings for him. I was confused. And I still am, I mean I like him-I mean he's- I mean Keith- I uh." Lance hangs his head, realizing he's said to much. "I just don't know anymore." Lance gives up.

Cas hesitantly reaches out and puts a hand on Lance's shoulder. He'd never been very good at all those human interaction things, especially when somebody needed comfort. He just didn't read signals all that well. "I know it's confusing, but you'll find an answer eventually. I mean, I know it's not the same, but when I was trying to choose between doing as heaven requested, and helping Sam and Dean, I was really lost. Big decisions are always a mess."

"Yeah, I guess you're right, I just don't want to mess this up with him. I mean what if he's not into that kind of thing, guys I mean. And what if he doesn't want to be friends with me if he doesn't feel the same way." Lance says returning for the search for the tree clerk.

"If he doesn't want to be friends with you anymore, if he's willing to throw away everything good you've shared, just for that reason, then…" Cas tried to think of what Dean would say. "Then he's a douche bag." Lance smiles at his use of his vocabulary.

"Yeah, your right. I mean Keith may be many things, but deep down, he's no douche bag… do you think... Do you think, maybe i should tell him?" Lance asks as they spot the man their looking for.

"I can't make your decisions for you, Lance." Cas says. "I've seen many people fall in love over the thousands of years this earth has existed. Everyone's story works out differently. This is something that only you can know." Lance nods.

"For someone with so little knowledge about earth and human culture, you sure are wise." Lace says to him before striking up a conversation with the man. "Hey, we found the two trees we want, could you help us out?"

****Time skip brought to you by: Quiznack…****

The silence in the Impala on the way home is strange. It's half peaceful, half strained in a way nobody can really understand, only punctuated with the lyrics of the song Dean's always identified most with. _Man in the Wilderness_, by Styx.

"_Sometimes I feel_

_Like a man in the Wilderness."_

Dean sang along.

"_I'm a lonely soldier off to war_

_Sent away to die_

_Never quite knowing why_

_Sometimes it makes no sense at all."_

When they got home Lance went straight to setting up the big tree right in front of the apartment building. He silently prayed that he wouldn't get fined for this, I mean, it's Christmas, what the worst that they'll do right? Lance then knocked on the wood of the tree right after thinking that. Keith, Dean, and Cas took the small tree inside. They said hi to Lance the few times he came inside to grab a box full of lights that Lance had hidden in his closet when they moved in. and before they knew it, they had a fully decorated tree inside, and one with a lot of lights outside.

Dean was sitting cross-legged in front of the tree in their living room, just staring at it. He didn't seem to want to go much of anywhere, happy to just bask in Christmas. Cas just shrugged his shoulders and left to his room. Sometimes, Dean made absolutely no sense.

Keith announced that it was "help yourself to anything you can find and get your hands on first night" for dinner, he then grabbed a cinnamon roll and went to his room to eat it. Lance then looked in the fridge to find the other one that Keith didn't take and took it to his room as well. It was then that Lance remembered he was going to be sharing a bed with Keith that night.

For a little while they just sat there eating, they finished at the same time and Lance offered to take Keith's trash out for him. Keith was slightly surprised, but let Lance take it. When Lance got back, Keith could tell he had something on his mind.

"What is it Lance?" Keith asked as he lied down into the bed, Claiming the right side of it. Lance suddenly raked his mind for something to say that wasn't his confession of love to this mullet boy next to him

"I- it's just- Dean. he seems so _sad_ all the time. It makes me sad." Lance says convincingly. Keith then felt sad, he didn't want Lance to be sad, he was never sad, it helped Keith be happy, he might never say it out loud but he loved how positive Lance was all the time.

"I think living with us is gonna help with that." Keith laid back all the way and pulled the covers up to his chin to keep warm, Lance smiled, that was cute.

"Yeah, i hope so." Lance laid next to him. "Oh, and you should be warned, I move in my sleep. I like to cuddle." Lance says. Keith looks at him for a moment then realizes he's not joking. _Shit..._ he thinks to himself.

Nobody was aware that Dean, after glancing at the fridge, went to bed without any dinner. The usual fear from his childhood had sneaked back in. What if there wasn't enough for everyone? Well, simple fix. He just wouldn't have any. I mean really, who cared if he went to bed hungry?

Nobody. That's who.

* * *

**hey guys, Sam here, sorry about the late update, things have been a little crazy, we hope you enjoy this chapter, the first person to comment or review will get a shout out in the next chapter, have an amazing day all of you!**


	7. When The Cat's Away

****Time skip sponsored by: Baby****

Lance shoveled cereal into his mouth happily with Cas as Dean got ready and Keith showered. Keith was the first one awake, unless you count the fact that Cas didn't sleep and just watched Dean all night, but Lance seemed unfazed by the fact that Keith had to pry Lance off of him that morning. When Lance warned Keith about being a cuddler, he wasn't joking. Once Lance was awake he got up showered and got ready while Keith laid in bed and re-evaluated his life choices.

Cas was mystified by the concept of lucky charms. There was a little man on the box, but only food inside. I mean it tasted great but he wanted to meet this little man dressed in green, he looked fun. But he moved on when Lance said there were marshmallows in it.

Dean came out ready for the day wearing his combat boots, jeans rolled up at the bottom but still hanging over his heels, a t-shirt with a breakfast club reference on it and a black leather Jacket.

Cas was wearing his normal white button up shirt a blue neck tie and his light brown trench coat. Lance noticed it was the same thing he had worn three times before, but didn't mention it. On the other hand Lance was wearing a black T-shirt, his normal dark blue jeans and his signature coat. He always had his coat. Even in space.

Dean sat down and poured himself some Breakfast and not to long after Keith came out with his mullet of a head pulled up into a high ponytail, his bangs still covering his face slightly. He sat next to Dean and got himself some food as well. It was silent for a moment until Keith of all people broke it.

"Lance… is that my shirt?" is what fell from his lips. Lance looked down at himself and shrugged like it was no big deal.

"Might be." he says then looks back up. "I don't know, sorry." he tries a smile, he had honestly not meant to put on Keith's shirt. "I can go change-" Lance tried to offer, but Keith quickly cut him off.

"No, it's OK. I don't care." Keith pours milk over his Cheerios. Dean was biting his lip trying not to laugh, but he failed and he snickered, Keith shoots him a look. "Says the guys with a Breakfast Club shirt." he scoffs.

Dean just looked offended. "The Breakfast Club is one of the best movies of all time. No making fun of it."

"See, Dean can recognize a good movie when he sees one." Lance complains, Lance was a sucker for old movies, but Keith found them all cringey as hell.

"Yeah, but our first night here you stayed up and watched chick flicks with Cas. I don't think you can say anything right now." Keith took another bite of his food.

"You people…" Dean let the sentence hang, shaking his head and eating his breakfast with almost reverence.

"So what are we doing today?" Cas bounces in his seat and Lance grins, Keith was only slightly worried by it.

"I got this amazing idea, I wanna take you somewhere and it's gonna be soooooooooooo cool, you'll love it." Lance pauses. "And while were gone the emo kids can set something on fire or something." Lance shrugs and Keith rolls his eyes.

"Where are you taking him?" Keith asks.

"A bee farm." he whispers across the table, ailing and everyone present hears him.

Cas's eyes widened, and from the expression on his face, you'd think Christmas had come early. "Really?" Lance's face grew brighter and his smile bigger as he nodded.

"It's gonna bee the best." Lance ginned even bigger as Keith groan slamming his head into the table.

"No bee puns Lance, we talked about this." Keith groans louder then necessary.

"If you get to be emo, I get to make as many puns as I like." Lance says matter of factly sitting up straighter.

"I've always found puns extremely entertaining." Cas says. "There are so many in scripture. The prophets loved making plays on their names. It began in Egypt-"

Dean reached out and put a hand over Cas's mouth. "If I wanted to know about that, I wouldn't have dropped out."

"Keith is a drop out too," Lance says trying to contribute to the conversation. "Well actually he just got kicked out because his teacher said the Kurberos mission was a pilot error and his brother was the pilot and so he threw a desk at him." Lance concludes

"Man." Dean shook his head. "If any of my teachers said something like that, I'd be in jail for capital murder."

"I'm pretty sure they had to restrain him after that, but Keith won't talk about it. That's all the info I have that I know is true." Lance says ignoring the death glare from the man with a mullet next to him.

Dean slapped Keith's shoulder. "Don't sweat it, man. School's pointless anyway. They don't teach you anything useful At least, that's what Dad always said."

"I guess... I mean I made use of my time living the desert all alone... In the middle of nowhere... By myself." Lance frowns at Keith and his sudden emo dialogue.

"Keith, remember you're not alone anymore. You have me," Lance pauses before quickly adding, "and Dean, and Cas."

"You hung out in the desert all by yourself?" Dean asks, "Man, that blows."

"Tell me about it." Keith huffs out a breath of air that moves his bangs slightly.

"No, do not tell him about it, just get your lighters and some paper, go out to the back, and try not to get arrested. OK?" Lance stands and tugs Cas up with his and towards the door.

Dean laughed. "If and when I get arrested, I think the fact that we're lighting stuff on fire will be the thing on my rap sheet they're least interested in."

Cas rolled his eyes. Lance just nodded, opened the door and shoved Cas out, he then points two fingers into his eyes then straight at Keith, and then left. Keith blinked, _what was that for?_

Dean pushed his empty bowl away from him and eyed the box mournfully before turning to Keith. "So, what're we gonna do? Or do you really wanna go light stuff on fire? 'Cause I'm game." Keith smiled in wicked way that Dean couldn't help but enjoy.

The next thing they knew they were in a abandoned parking lot with a trash can full of paper and wood they had found lying around. Keith drenched it in lighter fluid and didn't stop till the bottle was empty.

Dean pulls out five different lighters. "Which one?" he asks, holding them out to Keith. Keith looks at them, and promptly picks one with a large mushroom cloud design and then tosses the other four into the can to help the explosion Keith was hoping for.

Dean grinned. "I love doing shit like this. I always used to get in trouble when I tried."

"Adults can get in trouble… Unless we break a law, or something stupid like that, but I doubt we'll do something that bad" Keith says lighting up the lighter. "Step back, or don't, I don't think it'll be that big." Keith ties a string around the lighter to keep the flame their, then tosses it in not wanting to be part of the explosion.


	8. When The Cat Saves Your Ass

****Time skip sponsored by: Deanmon****

"So," the cop says, leaning against the table in front of Keith in the interrogation room. "Let's talk about the man you came in here with. Dean Winchester."

"What about him…" Keith says with a rock hard face. "I mean, if that's his name. I'm not sure."

"Look, son, you don't have to go down with him. Just turn some state's evidence about the things he's done, and… We can work something out for you."

"Look I threw the lighter, I made the mushroom cloud... Don't I get a phone call?" Keith says not changing his tone of voice or his expression.

"You can have your phone call in a minute. This has nothing to do with the lighter or the mushroom cloud. Aren't you aware of who this man is?"

"Yeah, he has a few mental issues, he has some daddy issues, he has a little bit of a brother issue, and he likes Christmas, oh, and Emo music, I mean we get along quite well, so can I call someone now?"

"Dean Winchester is legally dead. He has a death certificate. He has a grave. Not that this is the first time we've run into that problem with this guy, so I'm not overly surprised. He was on the top of the FBI's wanted list. Him and his brother, Sam Winchester. Multiple counts of arson, grave desecration, trespassing, murder in the first degree, serial shooting, robbery, credit card fraud, the list goes on." The cop smirked, thinking he'd scored a point. "Now, is there anything else you'd like to say about your friend?"

"His hair looks like a hedgehog in the mornings, now do I get a phone call or not, this person is important." Keith insisted for a third time

Shaking his head in annoyance at Keith's smart mouth, the officer hands over a phone. "Make it quick." Keith took the phone and quickly dialed Lance's number it range a few times then his voice came from the other side.

"_Hello?" _he said.

"Lance, it's me Keith, so hey, you know how you told me not to get arrested after you told me to go set things on fire with that guy we only meet like three days ago…" Keith starts to say

"_Keith, if you-" _Lance starts to say but Keith cuts back in.

"Yeah, i totally got arrested, and now they want me to tell them that he's this Dean person that is like wanted and crap, I mean the Dean their talking about has a brother named Sam, our friend has a brother named Channing… right?" Lance seems to get what Keith is doing and goes along with it, because we all know they are listening in on the conversation and recording it.

"_Uh, yeah, Channing, and his brother is only thirteen right? Wait did you say their looking for a Dean? That's not even his name! His name is David." _Lance says in a very convincing manner.

"I know, it's crazy, anyway, would you come and like Bail me out and stuff." Keith says.

"_I don't know, I told you not to get arrested, sooooooo…"_

"LANCE!" Keith growls. Lance chuckles from the other end. "Please just get your little sassy ass over here."

"_Alright, I'm on my way." _he then hangs up.

The cop stares at Keith for a second, then pulls a little tape recorder out of his pocket. "If what you and your friend were saying is true, then I guess that explains what your friend said when we asked him to make a confession tape." He pressed the play button, and Dean's voice floated out of the device.

"_Make a confession? Okay. I'm an Aquarius… I enjoy sunsets, long walks on the beach, and frisky women._"

Another man's voice came out of the recorder.

"_That's not a confession._"

"_Sure it is._" Dean's voice answered. "_I just admitted I like sunsets and long walks on the beach. There's nothing more embarrassing._"

The cop pushed the stop button. "He's a real smart ass, but either he's a good liar, or his telling the truth."

"I mean he did have quite a few photo of sunsets in his scrapbook. I thought that was a little weird. And there is nothing more true then the fact that he likes frisky women…. I learned that the hard way. Sorry sis." Keith mutters that last part.

"Give us his full name, and we'll check it against his fingerprints." The cop is tired, and he just wants the day to be over.

"You know, I can't really remember his last name, wait till Lance gets here, he'll remember it, and I don't think David ever gave me his middle name, I mean I've never told anyone my middle name." Keith hoped and prayed that Lance got the message and was bringing his best game.

Right then, another cop opened the door and came in, dragging a handcuffed Dean behind him. Dean had a black eye and his lip was bleeding, something that definitely hadn't been there when they were brought in.

"David, are you alright? What did they do to you?" Keith asked worried, he would have stood up but he was cuffed to his chair, so that would have been a bad idea.

Dean grinned, cocky as ever. "I'm great. Some people just can't take a joke and think it's alright to smack you around when you can't defend yourself, that's all. Nothing that hasn't happened before."

"Dude, I'm so sorry Channing is going to freak when he sees you like this." Keith feed him information without giving it all away. "Man, you look like shit. No offence."

"I'm beautiful, thank you very much." Dean answers smoothly as they sat him down in a chair by Keith. He was too used to lying through his teeth to cops and thinking on his feet to let all the random information phase him.

"Lance is on his way, and we all know he'll be bringing Cas with him. Those two might as well be joined at the hip. Did you get your phone call?" Keith asks like he's clueless to how this whole thing works.

"They offered," Dean said, "but I didn't bother. Didn't really think I had much of anyone to call. Cas doesn't use his phone."

"Ah, gotcha." Keith nods. "Hey, they think your this crazy person named Dean, who has apparently died and robbed graves and killed people, and I'm pretty sure you've done none of those things. It's ridiculous. Sometimes I wish police officers were smarter."

Dean started laughing. "Shit, and I thought I was dumb. That's a whole other level."

The cop who'd come in with him shoved the back of Dean's head so hard his face slammed into the table. "You watch your mouth when you're talking about the force." he snapped, and pulled Dean back up by the back of shirt, ripping it. For just a second, they all paused when they saw large, cruel scars criss-crossing his back, but the moment passed and the officer backed off a little bit. "You hear me, asshole?"

"Is Lance here yet?" Keith asked cutting the awkward atmosphere with a butter knife.

Right as he asked the question, the door opened again, and Lance and Cas came in. "This place smells… interesting." Cas observed. "Maybe you should clean it occasionally."

Keith smiled at them as they entered. "Lance, you made it, good job, i'm glad you didn't get lost." he asks him a question with his eyes. Lance nods.

"Officers, I believe you have the wrong men." Lance says puffing up his chest. "I happen to have brought their identification with them, seeing as they left it at our shared apartment." Lance holds up two different wallets.

The officers examine the IDs carefully before the first one nods his head. "Alright. I guess they can go."

"Can I have a tissue first?" Dean interrupts, trying to stop the blood now coming from his nose, (having your face smashed into a table will do that to you) but not having a lot of success. _Damn handcuffs._

Lance pulls a few things out of his back pocket before he gets to the tissue he has, as the officers un-cuff them. Lance hands it to him and he nods with a thanks.

"Just to thank you guys for letting us go, out of the generosity of my heart, I won't sue you people," Dean says as they undo his and Keith's handcuffs, "but seriously, you need to work on your attitude problem. You hug your wife and kids with those hands?"

"Come on, David." Cas says guiding him out of there. "Let's get you home, you need to take a nap. Too much excitement for one day."

For the first time, Dean makes a weird face. "What am I, two?" Lance laughs as they leave the station.


	9. Lance is Mom now

_here is a long chapter to make up for the short chapter, please enjoy, and leave comments about what you wanna see next! -Sam_

* * *

****Time skip brought to you by: Vrepit Sa****

Lance and Cas are having a hard time not bursting into laughter as they drive home. And then, Lance can't stand the silence any longer, so he asks the question.

"What exactly, did you do?" Lance questions the two in the backseat.

Dean is smiling like a kid on Christmas. "We made a damn well _mushroom cloud_." Lance almost crashed the car at that, he steadied the wheel taking a deep breath before he scolded them

"Why the HELL would you do that?" Lance yelled at them "Keith do you know how irresponsible that is? That is so stupid, I can't even begin to describe how mad I am!" Lance takes another deep breath trying to calm himself. "When we get home, I'm gonna have to treat both of your burns."

Keith looks down at himself. He hadn't really realized his arms were red and bubbling slightly in a few places, his entire outfit was singed and black, it had been slightly on fire when the can exploded. Now he wondered what his face looked like.

Dean just laughed. "Treat these little baby things? I get worse on a routine salt and burn. If I'd suggested wasting medical supplies on shit like this, Dad would've-" Dean broke off. He didn't want to sound all emo and sad again, not after what Lance had said at the tree lot.

"Well I don't care." Lance states firmly. "I paid for both of you two buffoons to get out of that place and the least you can do is let me bandage you up." Lance takes yet another deep breath. "Sorry, I don't want to be rude." he says looking down slightly. "But answer me one question, did anyone else get hurt?"

"We were in an abandoned parking lot." Dean says immediately. "Nobody else was anywhere near us. The only casualty is my shirt." He yanks off the shredded t-shirt. He looks honestly a little upset. "That bastard. It was one of my favorites."

"It _was _on fire not to long ago Dean." Keith points out and that's when Cas loses it and starts laughing.

"Dean doesn't generally seem to consider fire damaging." Cas says once he's calmed down a little. "You should see some of his other shirts. Random holes burned in most of them. He still would've worn that one, no question."

Lance looks in the rear-view mirror, and it was confirmed. Lance was not straight. I mean, he knew he wasn't he was gay for Keith, but Dean… man was he a good looking man.

"Keith, there should be a box under your seat with some extra clothes in it. Help Dean get a shirt on." Lance commands

It's only after Keith helps Dean pull on a t-shirt in the small confines of the car that Dean realizes all the scars on his back were visible. He goes red and leans back against the seat with his arms folded like he's trying to hide something, even though the shirt now covers them. Maybe nobody had noticed.

"Ok, we're one block away, and I have an idea." Lance says cutting the silence again. "You both need to get a job." he declares. It was true that Lance was on of the only people in their group who currently had a job, Keith recently quit his before they moved and he didn't know the last time Dean or Cas had a job. "You need an honest living, which I think became clear to us that you didn't have one at the station." Lance continues. "Which is ok, but now that you're, David, you can kind of start fresh."

"I've never had a job." Dean says, sounding a little worried. "What do you even do if you've got a job?"

"I'll explain while I apply Aloe to your arms and face, let's go." Lance stops the car in their parking spot and pulls the keys out. The four climb out of the car and head inside. In no time Lance has both Dean and Keith sat in chairs next to the sink in the kitchen as he starts to patch them up.

"Ok, first things first." Lance says. "Dean may have never had a job, but David has, that's gonna make it easier to get a job, tomorrow, once your not grounded, I'll take you guys out and we can find somewhere that's hiring and I'll help you fill out some applications."

Dean nods. "Sure, man. Whatever." He pokes his finger at one of the burns on his arm, smearing the aloe around. "Man, this stuff is so _weird_. Dad said it was for sissies, and we needed to take care of our burns like men." Lance looked up at him as he was allying some to Keith knee.

"And what exactly do 'men' use to take care of their burns?" Lance asked, his aunt had been a nurse and was well trained and experienced from his time in space.

Dean shrugged. "Try not to get too much dirt in it and pray it doesn't get infected. Didn't always work out that well. I remember, this one time, I had this huge burn on my back, and it got so infected I had a fever of, like, 105, but Dad wasn't home, and I didn't think a hospital was a good idea, so Sammy shoved me in the bathtub and poured freezing water on me-" He broke off, again realizing how he'd sounded.

Lance looked back up at him when he stopped. "Everything ok?" he asked his, brow creased. "Why'd you stop?"

"No reason." Dean said quickly. "Just… Just no reason." Lance frowned.

"Look, you can talk about whatever you want, we won't judge, I just enjoy the cute happy memories, better than the emo sad ones, if you catch my drift." Lance explained wrapping a bandage around Keith's forearm.

"It's fine, I was done anyhow. It's not a huge deal. Why don't you talk about something happy? I would, but… I don't really have any of those. Not since Sammy…" He shook his head. "Never mind."

"Yeah, Lance. Why don't you talk about something happy?" Keith says, _I want to hear Lance talk_, Keith thinks to himself, _wait, that sounds creepy, I like the way his voice sounds… Not that's not any better… Uh, I uh, I can't win this one. I'm gay for Lance_. Lance smiles and nods, Lance liked to talk.

"Ok, so this one time when we were in space and we still had the Castle of Lions, Keith and I were headed for the pool, but then the elevator broke." Keith's face turned a light shade of pink, he hadn't realized this is what Lance was gonna say. "So Keith and I climbed up on top of it and we decided we should climb up the shaft, don't ask me why we decided that." Lance smiles, "Anyway were climbing and we were doing this whole linking arms back to back kind of thing, and then we were like really far up. Hunk would have wet his paints. Then we almost fell and so we started fight like we always did back then, but then Keith saw a trap door in the wall, so we got to it and jumped in, it was like a slide all the way down to the pool, but when we got there, the pool." Lance pauses to laugh at himself, "the pool was on the ceiling." Lance laughs again.

"On the _ceiling_?" Dean asked, not quite sure he'd heard right. Lance nodded along with Keith.

"Stupid mother fucking Alteian pools." Keith muttered and Lance moved to wrap some bandages around different parts of Deans wounded body.

"Later on we asked Allura to teach us how to use it, and we failed miserably. I mean I got the hang of it, but Keith always landed on his head." Lance laughs

Dean starts laughing too at the image of Keith constantly landing on his head. "Don't take it too hard, man." he said to the mullet head. "When I was learning to swim, I almost drowned. A lot. Wish I could've just landed on my head and been done with it." Keith scoffed.

"Yeah, it was great, Lance constantly teased me about it, and I'm sure he won't stop till I'm dead." Lance looked up in surprise.

"You never asked me to stop." he says with a slightly concerned look on his face. "If you did I would have."

_Uh oh_, Dean thought. _Feelings_. He tried to make himself small and unnoticeable, but it wasn't really working out all that well, what with him being six foot one and too sexy not to notice.

"Well…." Keith starts to say. "Then stop." Lance blinks. "I don't like it." he says bluntly and Lance cracks a smile.

"And this whole time I thought you secretly enjoyed it because you never told me to stop…" Lance smirks up at him

For some reason, Dean felt like he had to defend his friend's lack of standing up for himself before now. "Sometimes people don't ask you stop, even if they really want to. Sometimes, they're scared too, 'cause it might make you mad, and when people get mad, they get mean, and tell you they're in charge-" Dean froze. "Uh… never mind. Just… never mind." He was never defending anyone ever again.

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Lance nodded. "Makes sense, sorry Keith." Lance says finishing up the last bandage on Deans knee which had been cut open by some kind of shrapnel.

Dean looked at Lance with some amount of confusion. "Thanks, man. Nobody's ever really done that for me before. Except Sammy."

"No problem." Lance slapped his leg as he stood up. "Now go to your rooms. Your both grounded. I'll let you out when it's time for lunch."

"You can't ground me, I'm a grown-ass man." Dean snaps. He didn't take very well to being grounded. When he was growing up, you only got grounded when you almost got somebody killed, and he didn't think it was all that fair right now, since everybody seemed perfectly fine to him.

"Well, Cas and I are going to go out for a little bit, I won't make you go to your room, but you can't leave the house. On account of what happened the last time you two left the house." Lance says and Keith just smiles like the guilty emo ass kid he is.

Now _that_ was an order Dean was very used to. "Yes, sir." he said reflexively, then winced. _Damn it_.

"What?" Keith and Lance asked at the same time looking to him.

"Nothing." Dean said, looking down at his shoes. "We won't leave the house. I promise."

"Ok, good. Keith?" Lance looks to the dark haired boy who nods. "Great. CAS! Ready to go?" Lance calls walking out of the kitchen. Cas comes running down the hall and almost knocks Lance over. They wave goodbye and leave the two emo kids alone once again.

"You say nothing a lot." Keith says once the door closes. "I'm beginning to think it's something."

Dean shakes his head. "My 'somethings' don't matter, so they're nothing." _Not that complicated, now is it?_ he thought. _Then again, it was a concept Sam had never seemed to be able to grasp either, and he'd gone to college. Maybe it only made sense to people as stupid as Dean and, of course, Dean's dad. But John wasn't stupid…_

_Oh, whatever. All this thinking was making his head hurt._

Trying to deflect the attention off him, he says, "What's up with the scar on your face, anyhow? You get mugged or something?" Keith smiled slightly and chuckled, but his smile faded as he thought about how he really got it.

"It's not actually a scar." Keith starts. "It's a Galra marking. Remember how I'm part alien?" Dean nods, "Yeah, so it only comes out when I get angry or I'm fighting super hard core… My brother, Shiro, got replaced with a evil clone in space, and I had to kill him, kind of, but during our fight my Galra side showed itself for the first time, well physically that is, and that's when this appeared." Keith explains.

"That's… really damn hardcore." Dean says, shocked.

"Yeah." Keith shrugs like it was almost nothing. "Anyway, I kind of noticed you have a few scars of your own, care to share?"

"Uh…" _No, he really really didn't want to share, but Keith had just told him about killing his brother clone thing. It wouldn't be fair not to tell him something too._ "It's not a huge deal. Just… an accident." _Yeah, downplay it. Make like nothing happened. That would work._

"You have foot long scars along your back from and an accident?" Keith asked skepticly. "You don't have to share if you don't want to, just tell me and I won't ask."

"No, it's fine." Dean ran a hand through his hair. "I've just never talked to anybody about it before. Not even Sammy. I mean, he would've gone ballistic if he knew."

"Sounds like some hard core stuff went down. Wanna sit on the coach?" Keith offered grabbing a bag of Doritos off the kitchen counter as he did so.

"Yeah, that sounds good." Sitting down was a great idea. Keith and Dean settled themselves on the couch and started eating the chips. Now that the moment was here, Dean seemed like he wasn't sure if he could actually get the words out.

"So." Keith started. "How long ago?" he prompts, Keith can tell it won't get any better if he keeps it inside, he wants to help, but Keith has never been the best at emotions and helping with them. Or at least he didn't think he was.

"I was… shit, I was seventeen." Dean almost looks startled at the amount of time that's passed. "I was seventeen, and stupid. Very damn stupid." He looked over at the wall, then the floor, then the silent TV. Anything not to meet Keith's eyes. "I screwed up so bad that night. I deserved it."

"Not many people deserve that kind of thing, and i don't think you did. What happened?" Keith asks, not making him look in his eyes, because Keith was also looking at the wall in front of the coach.

Dean got that faraway look on his face that people always do when they talk about their past. "I was supposed to be watching Sammy. Dad had just left again, hunting something or other. I dunno what, I just know it was nasty enough that he left us behind, even though by the time we were that old, he usually would've brought us along, but I didn't pay attention like I should have. I was tired, I hadn't slept in… maybe 52 hours, and I was about ready to just drop dead. So I fell asleep on the couch while we were watching _Ghost busters_."

Dean paused, looking scared to continue, but he knew if he stopped now, he wasn't ever starting again, so he forced himself to keep talking.

"When I woke up, Sammy was gone. I swear, I've never been more damn terrified in my whole life. I ripped that motel room to shreds looking for him. And when I found the note on the table, telling me that Sammy was just so done with hunting and that he'd run away, I about had a heart attack. I mean, he was thirteen. What made him think he could make it out there all by himself?"

Dean shifted his focus to his shoes. "I looked for him. For two whole weeks, I looked for him, and Dad still hadn't come home. I was glad Dad wasn't there, but at the same time I wasn't. I didn't wanna get in trouble, but I wanted help looking for Sammy. I mean, two weeks? With everything that's out there, I was starting to think he was dead. But then Dad came home."

Dean paused again. _Shit._ He didn't wanna keep going. But he had to. He just had to.

"He was so damn pissed at me when he saw Sammy wasn't there. He started yelling at me, asking if I'd let him go out to play video games again, that kind of shit. He was drunk, I could tell. But that wasn't all that weird. He was drunk a lot of the time. I didn't wanna tell him that Sammy had run away on my watch, but I had to. We needed to find the kid."

Dean looked around the room, like he expected something to help him, but of course, there was nothing. Since when and anyone really helped him? "For just a second, I thought he was gonna pass out. Instead, he just told me to kneel down on the ground facing away from him and take my shirt off. He was really into corporal punishment, you know? I mean, he used to be a marine. Life's supposed to be rough. He'd hit me with his belt a few times before that, when I'd done something really bad, but only ever two or three times. But that night…"

Dean licked his lips nervously. What would Keith think of him now? Definitely not that he was a hardcore, badass demon hunter. "It was just 'cause he was drunk. I know it was. He never would've beat me like that otherwise. He'd hit me before, like I said, but never enough to make me bleed. Never enough to leave me lying on the ground, just leave me there when I couldn't even move 'cause it hurt so damn bad. Never enough to give me these." He looked over his shoulder at his back, even though his t-shirt hid the scars. "But I was asking for it, so it was fine. I mean, Sammy ran away on my watch and he really didn't mean it. I don't think he even remembered in the morning, and I sure as hell wasn't gonna tell him. It was just 'cause he was drunk, so, in a way, it was an accident, really." Maybe if he said it enough times, it would be true...

Keith was silent for a moment, choosing his words carefully. "Dean. I know I can't compare to this kind of thing, but I can say a few things with 100% certainty. First is that, it wasn't your fault and you didn't deserve that kind of thing. Especially when you were only seventeen. Second is that fathers shouldn't get drunk when they have kids. Ever... So the fact that he was drunk was his fault, and if the reason he hit you was because he was drunk, then it wasn't an accident, because he chose to get drunk." Keith lets out a low sigh. "You are very connected to this Sam, and Lisa, and Ben. but sometimes you need to let go. I'm not telling you to do anything, but know, that i'm trying to help you out. As a friend." Keith and Dean lock eyes for a moment. Keith's eyes full of honesty and good intentions.

"I know I'm too connected to them." Dean admits, since he's not sure how to react to the first part of what Keith said. He had deserved it, even if Keith couldn't see that. He'd deserved all of it and more, if he only find somebody willing to give it to him that actually knew why. "I know it's unhealthy. I mean, everybody I've ever met has told me so. It's just… I mean, after Mom died, Dad got different. It was like losing both of them at once. Sammy was the only thing I had to hold onto, and I had to protect him. I was so damn scared of ending up alone. That's the only thought I've never been able to handle. The idea of being all alone…" He quickly wipes away the one tear that's managed to make an appearance, hoping Keith hasn't noticed. "And with Lisa and Ben… I loved them so much. I didn't really get the chance to legitimately fall in love with anyone before Lisa 'cause I didn't really stay anywhere long enough to do that. When I tried to picture myself happy, the only people I could see that with was them. And the fact that, in the end, it was my choice to go-" He broke off. "I was trying to protect them, and I know it was the right thing to do, but it still haunts me. The life I could've had, it haunts me. Every. Damn. Day."

Keith didn't exactly know what to say, he racked his brain for a good response how were you supposed to respond to that. He knew Dean wasn't big on hugs and frankly, neither was he, but then he got an idea.

"Should I order pie?" Keith asks

Dean smiles, seeing the gesture for what it is. "Sure, man. How could I say no?"

So the two adult males ordered pie from some place Keith managed to find that will deliver pie, seeing as their grounded, and then piled all the blankets they could find onto the couch and watched the breakfast club, because Keith was willing to suffer. Little did he know, he would end up enjoying it.

"So." Dean said as the credits finally started. "What's this thing with you and Lance?"

"What? Thing? There is no 'thing' with me and Lance. We are not a thing, I don't, I mean, why would he, I guess, wait what?" Keith blurts out without thinking.

Dean was in denial about too many things himself not to recognize it when somebody else was. "I'm talking about the thing where you both make moony eyes at each other and go red all the time and stare at each other when you think nobody's paying attention."

All Keith could do was stare at Dean, his mouth hanging open eyes wide. "Is it really that obvious?" Keith asks sadly looking down at his hands.

"Well, it is to me," Dean says, "but it probably wouldn't be to everybody. I've been trained to notice every little detail, 'cause it might be the difference between life and death. I pay more attention to the people around me than most. I doubt anybody else knows. If that makes you feel any better."

Keith grabbed the closest pillow to him and shoved his face into it, letting out a low groan. He then lifted his face tucking his chin in his arms that were wrapped around his knee. "You said, we make moony eyes at each other? You think he likes me?" Keith lifted an eyebrow.

Dean laughs. "Are you kidding me? He's looking at you like I was looking at the Carter twins in high school."

Keith laughed softly. "Wait." he stopped laughing. "What do I do?" He says more to himself then to Dean. "Oh shit, what am I gonna do now?" Keith started to panic, he may be like twenty-three but he has never EVER been in a relationship let alone confessed his feelings for someone.

"What you always do in these kinds of situations." Dean said calmly. "When it hits midnight on New Years, you kiss 'em. Way more effective than just opening your mouth and saying something. Especially since everybody's drunk and way more open to everything."

"Makes sense." Keith shrugs. "And that gives me time to process what I'll be getting into." _could Lance really Like me?_ Keith thinks. "Are you sure?" Keith looks over to Dean. "I mean are you positive?"

"Well, I'm definitely more positive than I was the last time I took a math test, so that's gotta count for something. Believe me, I know more about this kind of shit than I do about a lot of things. I can list off all the chicks I've slept with, if that'll help convince you." Dean smirks.

"Ok." Keith takes a deep breath. "Well the movie wasn't complete torture, so maybe eighties movie aren't all that bad." Keith smirks, changing the subject.

Dean smiles. "Of course it wasn't complete torture. The Breakfast Club is one of the best movies ever made, and anyone who says any different can go hit themselves with a hammer. Hard."


	10. Christmas Shopping With Cass

hey guys, Sam here, i only got one comment saying to keep going, it was from this person: DoctorAdrienTheJedi go read their stuff, i checked out their stories, they are really good, and thanks for reading, this is a long chapter, so enjoy, the next chapter will be out soon, first person to comment after this chapter is posted will get a shout out in the next one!

****Time skip brought to you by: Knife shoes****

"What do you think Cas?" Lance holds up a pair of red lion slippers to show him. "Do you think Keith will like these?"

Cas regards them seriously. In his opinion, present buying is very important work. "The red color makes them unique, and he rather likes red. and lions. I think they're good." Lance smiled, now they would have matching slippers.

"Ok cool." he sets them on top of the book he had found for Dean. "Ok, what are you getting for them?" Lance asks

"It's a hard decision." Cas says. "I don't really know Keith very well, and I've never gotten Dean a Christmas present before." He looks down at his shoes. "I almost feel bad for it, since I've known him for five years, but he never even seemed surprised."

"Keith likes hippos and knives, and Dean likes Pie and knives. I think it's pretty clear." Lance pauses. "Get Dean a pie with a knife in it, and get Keith a toy hippo holding a knife."

Cas's face brightened. "That's perfect!" They hunted down the suggested items and started to the checkout line. Cas was smiling happily at the gifts. "Dean is going to be so surprised that we actually bothered. I can't wait to see his face. I hope Keith is happy too."

"Keith will love it, if I know him at all, he will probably jump up and down hugging it like a three year old." Lance says sneakily hiding the gift he was buying for Cas under a bag of gummy bears he had bought for himself.

"I'm going to make your present, if that's okay." Cas says, looking over at him. "I thought of something perfect, but I doubt you could get it in a store."

"Thanks man." Lance smiles at him. "That's super nice of you and uh, can I ask a question?" Lance asks, but doesn't wait for a response before asking it, "What did you mean when you said, Dean was going to be surprised we even bothered?"

"Dean isn't used to getting presents." Cas says like it's a completely normal thing. "Sam used to get him something when he could, and Dean always got something for Sam, but nobody else really bothered or cared. He's honestly more surprised when he gets a present than he is when he doesn't. I think his father started it. Told him Christmas was pointless and a waste of money."

"The more I learn about Dean, the more my soul gets stabbed." Lance frowns, his voice sounding a little stained, but then his face lit up slightly as he got an idea. "We have five days to change that." Lance says a smile splitting onto his face.

Cas tilted his head. "How?"

"When were done here, were gonna go a few other places and get as much stuff for Dean we can find, wrap it all and leave a few on the doorstep each day until Christmas for him, but then on Christmas morning, we'll have a mountain of stuff for him!" Lance exclaimed paying for their items and taking the bags.

Cas nodded. "That's a good idea. Just make sure not to get stuff he'll ruin by pouring salt all over it. With something as out of the ordinary as getting Christmas presents, he's gonna make sure they're not cursed or possessed or something."

"Alright then," Lance takes a few over dramatic steps into the parking lot, lifting his knees up as high as they can go them stretching his leg out as far it will go that way. "Let's go solder! Left! Left! Left right left!"

Cas shakes his head, following behind Lance. "Dean's the soldier, not me. At least, that's what he's always saying. That he tried to be a good soldier. I don't know why. It's not like he was in the army or something. Maybe it has something to do with his father being a marine."

Lance stopped right in front of his car to place a hand on Cas's shoulder. "Cas. buddie, friend, amigo, old pal, angel. It's Christmas time. Let's try to stay happy! Ok?" Lance took a breath trying not to sound rude. "I love Dean and all, but sometimes his backstory is a little to much for me."

Cas nodded dutifully. "Sure. I don't blame you. It's a lot for anyone to take in." He paused, looking thoughtful. "Should I keep mine to myself too? 'Cause Dean always says it's a lot for people who aren't used to angels to take in." He wanted Lance to be happy. After all, he was right, it was Christmas.

"No my amigo de plumas, it's alright, if you wish to tell me your story you can, I won't stop you, in fact, I am a little curious about it." Lance says as they climb into the car after putting their things in the trunk.

Cas thought about it for a second. _What should he start with?_ "Well, I guess everything really started when I helped create the universe."

"Wow. Ok that's intense, go on." Lance pulled out of the parking lot.

"I remember spending a lot of time with Gabriel. Working with him on his speech to Mary about having Jesus. He was already preparing it."

"Ok, so like, I'm am an atheist, so don't mind me if I kind of have a hard time believing any of it, because before I met you, I thought there was no such thing as Angels. So ... yeah, but go on, so Jesus was a real thing."

Cas waved his hand dismissively. "Don't worry about not believing it. Dean didn't either. He stabbed me the first time we met, he was so skeptical, but yes, Jesus was a real thing. Gabriel wanted to say some rather… let's just say interesting things in his speech, but I stopped him before it got too out of hand. I honestly wrote most of it. He was too busy creating the platypus."

"HA!" Lance slapped the steering wheel. "That makes me happy, sorry ok go on. " Lance wipes a tear of laughter from his face and turns into a new parking lot.

"In my spare time, I created peaches and panda bears and bumble bees. There were many others, but those are some of my favorites. I remember Lucifer's face when I suggested babies."

"Wait." Lance stops him "Let me get this straight, procreation, was your idea?" Lance looks at him after parking the car.

Cas shrugs. "Babies had to get here somehow, the human race had to continue. I thought I might as well make the actual act of conception enjoyable, and even though there wasn't a lot I could do about childbirth, I thought babies should at least be cute enough to make it worth it. Gabriel thought it was brilliant."

"And let me guess." Lance and Cas climb out of the car and head in the store. "Lucifer, wanted them to be delivered by... storks?" Lance smirks at his joke. Hoping Cas would get this one at least.

"Yes, how did you know?" Cas says, surprised. He thought Lance was ignorant about these things.

"Ok, so there is this thing on earth, a story we tell kids on how babies are made, until they are old enough to know, and it's that storks deliver babies, so it was a joke, because I didn't know." Lance explains as he tries to teach Cas how to make jokes. It was going to be a lot harder than he thought.

Cas nods, digesting this. "I bet Gabriel started that. Michael didn't want us spreading any of Lucifer's ideas, but Gabriel didn't like following the rules. That's probably why he left heaven in the first place. He didn't want to listen to Michael."

"Ok, so how exactly did you, fall from heaven?" Lance hoped he wasn't getting into a touchy subject, but he enjoyed listening to Cas talk about this stuff, it was fun.

For the first time, Cas looked vaguely uncomfortable. "Well… it was a lot of things. I'm not like the other angels. They said I was too human. They said I thought and felt more like people than anything divine. I didn't think every decision they made was correct, and when I disagreed, I tended to do what it was I felt was best. I've been getting in trouble for it for millennia. I guess this most recent time was just one too many."

"Ok." Lance paused to process it. "Well that's stupid." he says "so, can you like… die now?" Lance assumed he couldn't as an angel

"All angels can die." Cas explained delicately. "Usually it requires a special kind of blade, but yes, I can die, and more easily than I used to be able to. I haven't told Dean because I don't want him to be worried about me."

"That's sweet." Lance said as he put a bundle of things into their card for Dean.

"He has enough to worry about as it is, without thinking about losing me." Cas said and shrugged. "I don't regret it. It was worth it in every way. The only thing I regret is not following Gabriel when he left instead of waiting to fall, but I suppose then I never would've met Dean, because I wouldn't have been in the position to pull him from hell. I would've been causing trouble with Gabriel somewhere else."

"Makes sense. What do you think of this?" Lance holds up a T-shirt with a knife on it that says 'knife to meet you, now back off'.

"I think it's great." Cas said sincerely, even though he didn't entirely understand what it meant, but it had a knife on it, so how wrong could that possibly be? Lance smiled and put into the cart with the many other things. They bought wrapping paper, tape, bows, ribbons, and so many more presents, a few for Keith but mostly for Dean to make up for his lack of christmas in his life. Lance didn't want to wrap them at home in case Dean saw them, so they wrapped them on his trunk, ALL of them.

After that they went to pick up dinner. "What do you want Cas?" Lance asked looking down the street of fast food restaurants.

"Hamburgers make me happy." he said, "Where do they have those?" Lance thought for a moment.

"I think burger king will make you happy, I mean you can get hamburgers from almost anywhere you want, but this place is called, BURGER KING. so." Lance let that sink in while he pulled into the parking lot.

Cas got this look on his face like Christmas had come a few days early. "There's a restaurant called Burger King? Where you get hamburgers? Just… whenever?"

"Ummm, heh, yeah, there are lots of places you can get Hamburgers… whenever. As long as you can pay I guess. I mean there's even a place I know you technically don't have to pay, but it's a homeless shelter, soooooo. We won't be going to get food their." Lance climbed out followed by Cas. "so tell me, have you ever tasted a milkshake?"

Cas once again tilted his head in that adorable way. "I don't know. What are they?"

"Oh-ho, you are in for a treat, come on." Lance all but dragged Cas inside and went straight to the counter where a young lady was standing there ready to take their order.

"Hi, welcome to Burger king, what would you like today?" she said, a happy smile on her face.

"First off," Lance said leaning one arm on the counter, he always acted like this around girls, "my friend here has never in his life had a milkshake, could you hook us up with two large cookies and cream shakes?" the girls nodded with a smile, her brown hair pulled back into a pony tail bobbing up and downs she did.

"Anything else I can get for you?"

"Hamburgers." Cas said immediately. "Lots of them." He looked like an excited puppy. It was adorable. The girl giggled and Lance smiled at the sound

"We'd like four of your best hamburgers." Lance confirmed. "And then one of your number three's." she smiled and put the order in, she looked back up with a soft smile.

"Is that everything for you?" she asked and Lance thought for a moment. He looked to cas.

"Do you think Dean and Keith should get sodas?" he asks

Cas nodded. "Get Dean root beer. It's his favorite, and he barely ever gets to have it." Lance nodded.

"Also, two large root beers." he stated. "And that's it." Lance confirmed. She put it in and smiled back up at them

"Ok, that'll be 35.99 please." Lance handed over his card and she swiped it for them. "Is this dine-in or take-out?" she asks.

"Take-out please." Lance smiled at her and she nodded once more. She seemed to do that quite a lot instead of talking. That was one thing Cas could understand. Sometimes it was better to just listen and try to understand what exactly it was that was going on around you instead of talking. But he was confused about one thing, so when the girl was occupied with something else, he leaned over to Lance and whispered,

"You asked for one of their number threes. What does the number three have to do with food?" Lance chuckled and shook his head, he actually liked explain this kind of stuff to Cas for some reason. Lance pointed up at the menu.

"Different meals and and items you can buy here have numbers, so you don't have to just point, or say their full name you can just say the number, and they know what you want. The number three is my absolute favorite, so I got it for myself." Lance explains

"Why is three your favorite?" Cas asks, genuinely interested. He's never thought of having a favorite number before.

"Because the number three burger comes with waffle fries." Lance admits with a shrug.

"Waffle fries?" Cas is even more confused than before. "What's a waffle fry? What are waffles?"

"Oh my god." Lance sighed.

"I feel like Dean might have mentioned them once. When he was talking about stuff he had no idea how to make and really wished he could have. Are they good?"

"They are probably the best thing this earth has to offer, but the fries are waffle fries, because of the pattern, waffles are a breakfast food. I'll make some sometime." Lance promised shoving his hands in his pockets as they waited for their food.

Cas smiled. "Sounds great and can you make some extra for Dean? I don't think he's eating like he should." Lance frowned.

"Well, yeah. I'll make them for everyone." Lance says as they place the paper bags full of food and the drinks on the counter for us.

Cas nods. "Thanks. I'm worried about him."

"Me too." Lance opens the door as they head out, the snow was picking up "Dude, we should build a snowman!" Lance says looking up at the sky momentarily before sitting in the car.

"A man… out of snow?" Cas looks very confused. "I can't give it life right now, Lance, I don't have my angel abilities, remember?"

"No." Lance laughs. "It's just for fun, not to make them come alive, you have three balls of snow that are different sizes, you stack them biggest to smallest and then give it a face arms made out of sticks, and a hat and a scarf and stuff, it's fun." Lance explains as he starts up the car to warm it up before they drive.

Cas nods slowly, like he's learning the secrets of the universe. "I see. I wondered what the children were doing."

"I know what we're watching tonight." Lance pulls out of the parking lot. "First, Frosty the Snowman. Second, Frozen."

"Frozen?" Cas looks even more confused than before. "Don't you think watching water become ice will be incredibly boring?"

"Just wait and see." Lance laughs shaking his head. Lance can't help but smile the closer they get to the house, he is slightly worried Keith and Dean did something else stupid, but he hadn't spent a lot of time with him in the last few days, and he wanted to kind of hang with him for the afternoon.

Cas threw out an arm to stop Lance the minute they got in the door. "They got going again." It's a second before Lance realizes Keith and Dean are sitting on the couch again, Keith looking concerned, and Dean looking like he's trying his very hardest not to cry. Lance leans on the door to listen to what their talking about, he didn't want to barge in at the wrong moment.

"Ok." Keith takes a deep breath. "Well the movie was complete torture, so maybe eighties movie aren't all that bad."

Dean smiles. "Of course it wasn't complete torture. The Breakfast Club is one of the best movies ever made, and anyone who says any different can go hit themselves with a hammer. Hard."

"Wouldn't that kill them?" Cas mutters, then his face clears. "Oh, that's the point. Of course. Sometimes I forget how quickly Dean's mind goes there."

"Welp, I'm going in!" Lance stands up and opens the door yelling "I'M HOME!"

Dean stands and whips around quickly, pulling a gun out of the back of his waistband. It was cocked and aimed before they even got a chance to blink. Lance in sudden surprise drops his lunch accidentally summoning the red bay-yard appearing in his hand and extending into a sword the tip pressing into Deans neck not quite puncturing the skin.

Dean lowers his gun once he gets over how startled he was, then takes a small step forward, just enough to draw blood. "Do it." Something in his eyes was screaming in pain and this feeling of needing to be punished. Lance's eyes widened and he drops the sword it shrinking back into the small handheld device.

Cas walks forward and pulls Dean backwards. "Dean. We've talked about this." Keith is super stunned he doesn't exactly know whats happening but it doesn't look good, Lance has only been able to summon his bay-yard when he was in a really dangerous situation, also, Dean just asked Lance to slit his throat.

Dean pushes Cas's hands away. "Whatever." He won't meet anyone's eyes and simply stares at his feet, wishing more than anything that he could take it back. Yeah, these people know he's got problems, but they don't know that while he's not hurting enough to just do it himself, he really doesn't mind the idea of dying. He doesn't mind at all.

Lance doesn't move, Lance just stares, at the food, then at Dean, then Keith, and then finally Cas. Cas frowns but tries to change the subject.

"We got Burger King, and waffle fries." Cas offers.

"I'm not hungry." Dean says quietly, grabbing two bottles of tequila out of the fridge and leaving to his room.

Cas goes over to the fridge and pulls it back open, looking confused. "There's too much food in here." He turns back to face Keith and Lance. "Have either of you been skipping some meals?"

Lance and Keith shake their heads. Cas looks at the door to Dean's room. "Damn it, Dean." he whispers, the first time they've hard the angel swear. "I've told him that he can't keep doing this." Lance looks to Keith, his eyes look full of tears, Keith rushes forward and hugs Lance as tight as he can.

Cas shakes his head. He's never been sure how to help people, and now is no exception. Finally, he just sits down and turns on the TV.


	11. Keith And Lance Go Out Kinda

****This time skip brought to you by: Dean and Lance's self esteem issues** **

(though Lances are more internalized, and Dean's by far more open with his)

"Cas, make sure Dean doesn't get too drunk, he needs to get a job tomorrow." Lance says quickly as Keith drags him out the door after having declared they were leaving and would be back.

"Don't worry, he knows what he's doing." Cas calls out as Keith opens the door. Lance stops to ask Keith something.

"Why and Where are we going again?" he turns to him and Keith quickly tries to come up with a response, he doesn't want to say because of Dean, and he didn't want to say I don't know.

"I'm taking you out, because I can, and I don't like being grounded." Keith shoved Lance the rest of the way out the door. His face lightly tinted red as he pushes Lance into the passenger seat of the car.

"So just out?" Lance asks tapping his fingers on his leg as Keith climbs in and starts the car. The snow has picked up and Keith didn't have time to grab his jacket.

Keith nods and pulls away from the curb. "Just out."

"So like, were going out?" Lance smirks trying to tease him but only get a glare in response.

"Shut up." Keith says, and plugs in his phone, his emo-ass music blaring and making any more conversation on that subject impossible. _No way is he ready to discuss that just yet. Dean said to wait, and it sounded like he knows what he's doing._

"Alright, just a joke, sooooooo… Where are we going?" Lance tries this time. He looks out the window at the snow picking up. "It's not outside is it? You don't have your coat." Lance asks concerned.

"I was thinking… Maybe we could go back to the ice rink?" Keith suggests hesitantly. "We weren't there for very long last time." Lance perks up, he loves ice skating and is like a pro at it.

"Really, awesome!" Lance bounces slightly in his seat with a big grin. He turns his face away from Keith to wipe away any remaining tears clinging to his face.

Keith pretends not to notice, and they drive the rest of the way to the ice rink in silence.

"Can I teach you how to do some nice ice tricks?" Lance asks as they start to put their ice skates on.

"Fine." Keith says. "I'll fall flat on my ass, but fine." Skates finally on, he tries to get out on the ice and fulfills his own prediction by falling flat on his ass.

"Keith, it's like riding a bike, you gotta balance, here hold my hand I'll help you start out." Lance holds out his hand to Keith to help him up as he slides up to him.

Keith blushes slightly, but takes Lance's hand anyway, praying the other boy hasn't noticed. "Like riding a bike, my ass. More like surfing on a roller coaster." Lance laughs and hoists Keith up.

"Your feet need to stay shoulder length apart, if you have a choice between falling forward or falling back, fall on your ass, I promise, it's better than losing your front two teeth." Lance says to him in a sweet voice.

Trying to draw attention away from the fact they're still holding hands, Keith says, "I wonder what I'd look like without my front two teeth." Lance laughs again, a cheery tune that makes Keith smile.

"Probably a lot younger, or like a meth addict." Lance comments, starting to skate, pulling Keith by his hand.

His brain running in all kinds of directions he can't control (What is it about Lance that messes with his thoughts so bad? Why? Why?!) he says, "What would you do to me if I got addicted to meth?" Lance thinks for a moment.

"I think I would probably slap you a couple times, make you quit cold turkey and make sure it never happens again." Lance explains, starting to go a bit faster than a snail pace.

At the increase in speed, Keith stumbles right into him and almost topples over again, but Lance catches him. "Shit." Keith hisses. He can't really come up with anything else to say. Lance's arms around him are too distracting.

"You ok?" Lance asks. Keith nods and tries to stand up again. "You wanna race?" Lance smirks.

"You're only saying that 'cause you know you'll win." Keith accuses.

"So is that a no? Are you scared?" Lance taunts with a smirk

_Oh, it is so on._ "Scared? Are you kidding me? Let's do this thing." Lance smiles and stands next to him.

"Have you ever roller bladed before, or roller skated?" Lance asks

"Roller skating." Keith admits grudgingly. Lance smiles.

"Nice, ok so it's just like that, just do that and try to beat me one time around the rink." Lance explains.

Keith nods. There's no way he's backing out now, and there's no way he's losing. "Just try to keep up." Keith speeds away after pushing off of Lance, sending him back slightly, Lance smiles and laughs chasing after him. Lance being more experienced and well, good, at it, he catches up quickly but slows to his pace.

"Hey buddy, how's it going?" Lance asks before fake yawns.

"Asshole." Keith snaps, trying to pull ahead, but Lance easily matches his pace. Damn it, he needs to win this.

"Hey, are you trying?" Lance asks mockingly he pulls ahead and leaps to go backwards, he's one foot ahead of Keith and he places his hands behind his head as he skate backwards. "What up pall?"

"Go to hell." Keith tries to shove Lance, but ends up losing his balance and falling on his face, skidding fifteen feet into the wall of the rink. Lance went the opposite way of Keith also loosing his balance from trying to dodge and Keith passes the finish line.

"Dude, are you ok?" Lance asks trying to get to Keith who had fallen on his face after Lance told him not to do that. Specifically.

Keith slowly sits up and shakes his head to clear it, then feels his mouth. "My front two teeth are still here, so yeah, I'm good." He gets wobbly to his feet, but gets so dizzy he falls back down again. "I think." Lance laughs slightly but stops when he sees the blood rushing from Keith's nose.

"Dude, you look like some anime character." Lance helps Keith up. "Blood is everywhere." Lance says as it drips past his mouth and down his chin.

Keith presses the end of his sleeve to his nose. "It's nothing." he says quickly. No way is he gonna live this down, but damn it, he's gonna try.

"Dude that's not nothing, come on, let's get off the ice for now." Lance carefully helps Keith off the ice, then searches his pockets for a tissue, he finds one and hands it to Keith for his double nose bleed. "Do you want some hot cocoa, or a churro?" Lance asks looking around and spotting a snack stand. "something?"

Keith feels like a little kid being offered a treat as long as he's good, but he wants what was offered too much to argue. "Sure, man. Whatever sounds good to you." Lance smiled, he was hoping he'd say that. Lance skips over to the snack stand and comes back about five minutes later with two cups of cocoa mounted with whip cream and sprinkles, and one churro.

"Here you go." Lance says handing him his cocoa. "I, uh, have been doing some shopping, and so…. I'm sorta low on cash for now, we have to share a churro." Lance says sitting next to his friend.

"Don't sweat it, man." Keith says quickly. Money isn't something he ever wants to let become a real issue. "At least we've got one in the first place." He takes it out of Lances hand and breaks it in two, handing Lance the slightly bigger half.

"Thanks." Lance takes it and nibbles it. "Hey," Lance gets an idea. "Once your face stops gushing, I could take you to a store so you can buy Christmas gifts for Cas and Dean." Lance sits up more to look into Keith's eyes who is just looking straight ahead.

"Sounds good." Keith says tightly. _Don't look at the blue eyes, don't look at the blue eyes, don't look at the blue eyes_… Keith looks at his eyes and smiles despite his efforts to. _Damn it. The blue eyes_.

"Awesome!" Lance sings sipping from his cocoa and getting a whip cream mustache.

Keith takes a sip of his own, fighting the urge to wipe the whip cream mustache off himself. "You got a little something on your face." he mumbles into his cup. Lance touches his lip and sees the white cream.

"Do I look like Corran?" he asks wiggling his eyebrows, Keith rolls his eyes. Lance licks it off his face. "How long until your face is gonna stop dying?" Lance asks with a smirk

"Ten minutes past never." Keith says. The pain in his nose is a bitch. "You wanna go get those presents now? Before Dean drinks himself into oblivion and Cas accidentally burns the house down trying to figure out toasters?" Lance laughs and stands holding out a hand to Keith.

"Alright, let's go." Lance helps him up. "Where you wanna buy them from? Walmart? Target?" Lance's voice trails off as he helps untie Keith's shoes.

"We should go to Walmart for Cas. Good stuffed animal selection. But for Dean, I think we should just go to the Army Surplus Store." Lance thinks for a moment, then shrugs moving to Keith's other skate.

"Alright." Lance says. "Now take your feet out, one at a time." Lance instructs.

"I know, Lance, I'm not two." Keith says, but yanks both feet out at the same time anyway.

"I know, but your injured." Lance says patting his shoulder as he stands up, both their sets of skates in hand. "Let's turn these in and go buy some fun stuff for our friends." Lance then turns and leads the way.

A short car ride later, they're inside Walmart, looking through all the stuffed animals. Cas loves adorable, fluffy things after all.

"So…" Keith starts awkwardly, not quite sure exactly how to go about this conversation. "How're you doing?"

"Uh, what do you mean?" Lance asks

"Well, y'know…" What to say, what to say… "Like, mentally and all that?" _Nice, Keith. Real subtle._ Lance pauses in his quest for a plushie and thinks.

"I mean, on a scale from one to ten, I think I'm a solid… three." Lance states going back to his search.

"Has that been the number for a while, or… or just since Dean asked you to... well, y'know." Keith gonna have words with him about that. Lance pauses yet again this time letting his arms hang by his sides, he looks down at his feet, his number never really dropped below a five, which wasn't exactly good, but since the… 'thing' with Dean, it changed dramatically. He had a hard time in space especially when someone else was in a hard place, because he wanted to help, so he put their needs above his and once, they wanted death.

Of course Lance didn't give it to them but it scared him, because there were times when Lance wanted the same thing and new it was bad. When he meet Cas his number lifted to about a seven maybe which was good, Lance made him a little more happy, to see someone a so innocent to the struggles of the world.

"Uh…." Lance tries to say, his words getting caught in his throat. He looks to Keith as if asking for him to just understand so he didn't have to say it out loud, but of course, that's not how communication works. "It's, it's uh…" Lance swallows a thick lump in his throats. "It's complicated," Lance offers knowing full well it won't work, not on Keith.

"It's not your fault, y'know." Keith says quickly. "About Dean. He just thinks he deserves to be punished for every little thing he's ever done, whether it was his fault or not, and when you pulled a blade on him, he thought he'd found somebody willing to do it, but that didn't make it right. He shouldn't have asked you. I can tell him to apologize, if that'll help. And… I'm sure Cas'll do something to make you happy." Keith had noticed the fact that Lance seemed to be in a better mood when he was around the angel.

Lance's eyes widened and he panicked slightly. "NO! don't, don't ask Dean to do anything, that'll make him feel worse!" Lance exclaims and then takes a deep breath. He would never admit it, but just being with Keith made him feel like an eleven out of ten, which was saying something, but when asked to think about it he would, and he would say the real emotional state underneath the Keith.

"Fine, I won't, if it really bothers you, but I just gotta say that you'd have to be worse than Satan to make Dean feel any worse, so I doubt it'll make much difference." Keith says with a shrug joining the search for a plushie.

"You seem to know a lot about this Dean. I mean he is technically wanted for a lot of things." Lance pulls out a bumble bee plushie and hands it to Keith, "here."

"I know enough to want to violently torture his father and this bee is perfect. Cas will love it." Keith says.

"So what, you had like a bonding moment?" Lance asks. "And your welcome."

"At least he remembers it." Keith says. "Do you wanna go to the army store now?"

"You think I could forget you cradling me on your arms?" Lance asks slightly distracted by their side conversation. "Now let's go get something for Dean"

Keith pauses for second. "You son of a bitch." he says, realizing he's spent too much time with Dean. Lance turns back to him.

"Don't insult my mother," Lance says, his mother was a touchy subject, after having gone into space the second time the time field around earth being faster than the rest of the universe, when they got back, humanity had started over, and every one they knew on earth had passed away, without them even getting to say goodbye. Lance then realized what he had said. "Shit."

"You do remember." Keith mumbles. "You really damn well remember." Lance's eyes widen. And then his shoulders slump, there was no saving this one.

"Yeah… I remember." Lance says softly. "It was just weird back then and in front of the whole team, I don't know, I didn't think before I said, that, but you know me, I can't just back down from saying something, especially to you, we were rivals for Pete's sake." Keith thinks on this, it made sense, Lance often acted on impulse.

"Ok." is all Keith says to that. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, wanting to get back to gift shopping. "Let's go pay for Cas's gift and then get something for Dean, then we can go home and make sure Dean and Cas are still alive." He suggests walking to Lance, and then past him.

"Ok." Lance says following him. They make it to the checkouts and to the next store without any real inconveniences.

Keith spent most of is honestly thinking of what he can get for Lance, he didn't want to go to big, or to small, it had to be right in between, it had to perfect. Keith looks over at Lance as they leave the store. A perfect gift for the perfect person. As the cold air hits Keith's skin, the snow having picked up a bit more, with a little more wind than earlier, Keith shivers and hugs himself.

"Keith, you must be freezing." Lance exclaims with a worried look on his face. Keith opened his mouth to respond but his chattering teeth gave him away. Lance promptly took of his jacket and took the bag with Deans gift in it from him, handing Keith his jacket. "Here, put this on, I'll survive."

"So will I." Keith tried, but his quivering voice made Lance give him a skeptical look. Keith rolled his eyes and slipped his arms into Lance's jacket and shrugs it onto his shoulders. Lance smiled and they got into their car.

Keith started the car and pulled out onto the road. Lance's jacket was warm, he had just been wearing it, this was Lance's body heat on his body. Keith couldn't help but smile at it. He took a deep breath realizing it smelled like him too. His new favorite thing is wearing Lance's jacket, but he would never tell that to anyone.

Keith looked over to Lance a small smile resting on his lips, Keith smiled, Lance was looking out the front window, Keith saw his eyes widen and he opened his mouth in alarm "KEITH-"

* * *

**hey guys, Sam here, sorry for another long chapter, they might start getting longer and i'll have to look into cutting them in half every now and then, unless of coarse, you like the long chapters then i'll keep them. and sorry about the cliff hanger... kinda, but if you wanna know what happened, comment down bellow what you think and the first person to do so will get a shout out in the next chapter this chapters shout out is : that's all for now, please have a good day and don't look strangers in the eye, that's creepy. we wouldn't want you getting possessed. see ya next chapter.**


	12. Don't go into a Coma Keith

****Time skip sponsored by: Corran Corran the Gorgeous Man!****

"Hey dean." Cas cracked open the bedroom door and peaked in at Dean taking a large swig from the glass bottle in his tight fist.

"What?" Dean wiped his mouth off with his sleeve.

"I need to talk to you, about Keith and Lance." Cas stepped in carefully, Dean turned on the bed to look at him.

"What about them?" Dean said again, he was drunk already, I mean it has been two or three hours so.

"They were on their way home and there was this accident-"

"Accident?!" Dean practically squeaked, and for just a second, all he could see was the glare of headlights and all he could hear was the sound of metal on metal when that semi nailed his baby. Then his mind cleared and he jumped to his feet. "We're going to the hospital. Right now."

"Ok, Dean, but-" Cas tried to say something

"No buts," Dean snapped, shoving his feet in his boots and grabbing his jacket on his way out the door, "just move your feathery ass."

"Ok, ok, let's go."

The climbed in Baby and got to the hospital in record time. Cas felt it would be best not to mention just how many red lights Dean had just run, or anything about the speed limit. Or how he shouldn't drive this drunk.

"Dean, Lance told me we have to check in at the desk." Cas points to the desk full of nice looking ladies.

Dean feels a little better. That was his specialty. "Hey." he says smoothly as he walks up to lean on the desk. "We're looking for Lance McClain and Keith Kogane." He gives them his best puppy dog eyes. Apparently something about the combination of big green eyes and ridiculously long eyelashes when he does that makes people want to give him whatever he asks for. He found it more than a little useful when he was in school and trying to convince teachers not to flunk him for not getting his homework done or not coming to school. He had his reasons. They just didn't need to know that.

The blonde nurse in front of the computer just stares, her mouth moving, but no sound coming out.

Dean leans forward, looking her right in the eye. "I'll come back and make out with you later, alright? Just tell me where they are."

Finally, she squeaks out, "Floor 3."

Dean nods. "Alright. See you later." He grabs the sleeve of Cas's trench coat and pulls him over to the elevator. Up they go.

They're almost to the door when they run into the doctor. Dean grabs his elbow. "Where's Lance McClain and Keith Kogane?"

The doctor takes in Dean's rumpled appearance. "How about no."

"Damn it, you son of a bitch, where are they?" Dean snarls, shoving the doctor back against the wall.

"Dean, stop." Cas says quickly, putting a hand on his shoulder, then turns to face the doctor. "I'm sorry for his behavior, he's just worried. Can you please tell us where our friends are? I'll keep him from causing any more trouble."

The doctor gives them one more disdainful look before saying, "Room 337."

"Thank you." Cas says, pulling Dean down the hallway. As soon as the doctor's out of earshot, he says, "Dean you can't do things like that. I'm pretty sure it's illegal. Do you want to get thrown out?"

Dean looks over at Cas, and allows how afraid he is to show through a little bit. "I just need to know they're okay." He may have just met Lance and Keith, but other than Cas, they're the people in the world he's closest to at this point. He can't handle the idea of losing somebody else. Maybe it was just because he knows them. Like he told Sammy, he's poison. When people get close to him, they get killed, or worse.

Really, he screwed up everything he touched.

Cas pats Dean's shoulder. "It's alright. Just… try not to assault the doctors in the future."

When they get to the door, Dean pauses before he pushes it open, afraid of what he may or may not see. After all, he basically died when him, Sam, and his dad were in that accident. Does he even want to find out what kind of shape Keith and Lance are in, but he has to know, so he pushes the door open.

Lance smiles up at him as he walks in, "Hey, you made it, how are you holding up guys?"

"How - how are _we_ holding up?!" Dean looks about ready to spit fire. "What about _you_?! And where's the stupid son of a bitch that hit you?! 'Cause I'll kill the bastard, I swear I will!"

"Calm down."Keith says from the hospital bed he's sitting on, "its was my fault. I got distracted, I ran a stop sign, the snow made it so neither of us couldn't stop in time, it's my fault."

"Bullshit." Dean says simply. "Where is he?" Dean looked around with angry eyes but Lance walked up to him.

"It doesn't matter where he is, it matter that your here." Lance gestured to the room. "Keith ran a stop sign, and the other car came from the left, and he ran into their empty passenger side. The airbag deployed, and now he has second degree burns up his left arm, but he's ok, no one else got hurt."

"No one else got hurt _yet_." Dean corrected, unable to meet Lance's eyes, very conscious of the fact that the last time they'd been a room together, he'd asked Lance to kill him.

"Dean, she's not in the hospital." Lance explained, staying calm.

"It's a she?" Dean looked rather put out. "I can't beat her up if it's a she. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? I can't hurt a girl. Only assholes do that." Lance smiled slightly.

"Exactly, and you don't need to hurt her anyway. As soon as they come back a with a few test results we can all go home. The damage wasn't to bad on our car, we can get him fixed, but we're gonna wait till after the holidays. Could we get a ride in baby?" Keith cuts in trying to sit up a bit more in his bed.

"You can have a ride whenever you need one." Dean says quickly. "And don't bother spending money to fix your car. I can do it for you. My dad showed me a few things, he worked in a garage before Mom died. He thought it would be a good idea if I could fix the car up on the run. I rebuilt Baby from the ground up after we got nailed by a semi. Trust me, I'll do a better job than any mechanic you can find." Dean finally looks at Lance. "Okay?" It's his way of apologizing for his earlier behavior. He doesn't know if Lance will get it, but hopes it'll be enough.

Lance's smiles wider than before, "really? That's cool, my dad used to do that kind of stuff to, that would be so nice of you. Do you think you could show me a few things while your at it, I would love to pick up some stuff my dad did while he was alive." Lance says.

"Hey guys." Keith calls from his spot across the room. "I'm still here." he says, Keith would never admit it, but he sort of liked having attention, ok he like it quite a bit, especially when he was hurt, Lance knew this and had already bought him a card and a bouquet of flowers and a small teddy bear from the gift shop… with Keith's money.

Dean looks over at him guiltily. "Sorry, man. D'you need help getting out to the car or anything?" If he could lift Sam, he could lift Keith and since he couldn't violently murder the other person involved in the accident, he wanted to do anything else he could. He needed to feel useful.

"Nah." Keith said shaking his head lifting his arm slightly. "It's just my arm, but I'm bored as hell."

Dean nods slowly. "I could get kicked out of the hospital for your enjoyment. Wouldn't be the first time. Once, they kicked me out when I was still technically a patient." Keith laughed, and then slowly stopped lifting his good hand to touch his head.

"Ow, maybe I hit my head on the- something, I don't know, that hilarious though." Lance walked over to him.

"Should I get the doctor?" he asked looked at Keith's head like a worried mother.

"Is it a concussion?" Dean asked, also concerned. He was an expert when it came to his own concussions, he knew when pain was just pain, or when something was seriously wrong, but he wasn't great at knowing if other people had one. Sammy had been able to just tell him.

"I'm not sure, how d'you tell?" Keith asks looking over at Dean. Lance then frowned, he hadn't thought about a concussion, that would be bad. He turned and started to head out the door to get the doctor for his poor Keithy.

"It depends on the kind of pain, and where it is." Dean says. "Can you describe it?"

"My head hurts, obviously," Keith says, "and my neck a bit too. Um…" He paused longer than was normal. "I'm really tired. I feel sorta sick. It's too shiny. My ears are ringing a bit. I think I might literally puke."

Dean nods. "That's a textbook definition of a concussion. Does it feel kind of like someone's driving an ice pick through your skull?"

Keith takes a second longer than usual to respond. "Kinda."

Lance comes back in the room with the doctor as he says, "A concussion huh? Well let's take a look." he says walking over to Keith. He does a few tests like shining a light in his eye which Lance has no idea why that would help him know if Keith is ok or not. Lance wrings his hands while waiting to know if he's ok.

Dean leans over to Lance. "No reason to have the doc check. He's got one for sure." Lance's face goes pale. That's not what he wanted to know. The doctor stands back up.

"Well, he's got one for sure." Dean scoffs slightly, having just called it. "I'll write down a prescription for you to pick up, I'll send it to the same place as your pain meds for your hand." he says walking out of the room. As soon as he's out of the room Lance rushes over to Keith.

"Oh my god are you ok? Can I get you something? Do you want a hug or something? Is there anything at all that I can do to help?" Lance rambles on and on without taking a breath.

"You can shut up, for starters," Dean says. "and the meds the doctor will be sending aren't anything other than glorified aspirin, so I wouldn't bother. You just need to rest. In bed. No loud sounds. No bright lights. And you should probably stay awake for at least twenty-four hours. If you're real tired, you can sleep, but somebody will have to wake you up every two hours. We don't need a coma on our hands." Lance had shut his mouth as asked but opened it back up after hearing the word Coma.

"WHAT?" Lance shreaks, "Sorry." Lance lowered to a loud-ish whisper "a coma? What?" Lance was honest at a loss for words of how scared he was for Keith's well being. Keith couldn't go into a coma, Lance would die if he didn't get to hear his voice. "No sleeping, I won't allow it." Lance turns to Keith "you are not allowed to go into a coma!" Lance covers his mouth, "Sorry." he whispers again.

Dean shakes his head. "He can sleep after twenty-four hours. It's not like it's a life sentence. He just needs to give his brain time to handle itself a bit." Lance nods slowly. He looks over to Cas, looking to see if he has something to say that might help.

"I'd help." Cas offers. "But I… well, I can't. So I'll just try to be quiet for you." Lance frowned, that's not what he meant.

"You can talk, I just." Lance paused and looked anywhere, but at Keith. "I'm worried about Keith." he says as if he's not right next to him.

Dean gives Lance a look like he understood, something that he found confusing. He didn't have anything in common with this overly happy son of bitch. Except, apparently, a need to protect people.

Even when there was nothing you could do.

"Is that Lance's jacket?" Cas points out looking right at Keith. Keith's face goes bright red and he opens his mouth to respond, he realizes he doesn't have a good excuse so he does his best with the truth.

"Uh, yeah, um you see, I forgot mine, I was cold, and I was driving and so Lance decided I needed to wear his, even though I didn't need it and now it's sleeve is burned up and I feel horrible and I'm sorry." Keith slowly slinks back into the pillow huddling the jacket around his face in a way Lance couldn't help but find adorable.

Dean just gave Keith a small, sly smile behind Lance's back. 'Told you so'. He mouths. 'Just like the Carter twins'. This only makes Keith blush harder and hid his face until it's completely buried in Lance's jacket. He mumbles something no one can quite understand.

"Keith." Lance tries to pry the fabric away from his face.

"Keith can't talk right now, he's in Jacket Town." he mumbles a bit louder so they can hear.

Cas, noticing that Keith is uncomfortable, but not quite sure why, decides he needs to do something to draw the attention away from him. "I didn't think we should have winter, you know. I wanted warm snow." Lance looks over at him raising an eyebrow,

"Cas, that's not exactly how it works." Lance would explain it, but this time it seemed a little too lengthy to explain in one go. Besides he was busy watching Keith act cute without anyone knowing that's what was happening. He loved it.

Cas folds his arms. "I'm perfectly aware that's not how it works, but it's only because that's how Michael decided snow should be made. He wanted it to be out of ice crystals. I wanted it to be made out of sunshine." Lance thought about it.

"That. Is like. The most- i just don't have words. It's adorable." Lance decides is the right word.

Cas smiles. "See? I told him the human race would agree with me, but he wouldn't listen, and he just had to pull seniority. He really regretted it, though, later on."

"I'm hungry." Keith mumbles just loud enough for Lance to hear it. Lance wipes his head to him a slightly worried look on his face, he had almost forgotten Keith was still hiding in his Jacket and had a concussion.

"Don't worry, as soon as we can get you out of here, we'll go home and I'll make your favorite dinner and we can watch your favorite move, and I'll stay up with you until your better." Lance pats Keith on his leg to try and comfort him.

"Nothing too hard on his stomach." Dean says quickly. "Concussions make you nauseous, and puking really isn't gonna help his case right now. Believe me, I know." That one time the only thing in the house was salsa, and he hadn't eaten anything in three days, and he'd gotten desperate enough to give it a go, stomach hurting from concussion or not… He shudders. Not pretty.

"Is Ramen ok? That's his favorite food." Lance slightly panics that Keith won't get to eat his favorite food.

"Ramen's perfect." Dean says quickly. "One of the best things you can do, actually. It's what I used to give Sammy when he was sick."

"Ok good." Lance sighs in relief "You hear that Keith, you'll get to eat ramen." Lance smiles at him, Keith has lowered the jacket just enough for his eyes to peak out along with his bangs. It was the cutest thing ever and Lance smiled biting his lower lip, trying to resist the urge to giggle like a schoolgirl.

Dean turned away and looked out the window, doing his best not to burst out laughing. These two were so thick if they couldn't see just how much the other was into them. It was so painfully obvious, his dad could've spotted it drunk better than he spotted when Dean was sick. Not that doing better would be hard.

"I think your good to go." the doctor walks in breaking the silence. "These are for you Lance." he holds out some papers in a light brown folder. "Make sure he gets rest, but try not to let him fall asleep in the next twenty four hours," he says, "and it might be better if you didn't sleep in the same bed or do… anything else for a little while."

At that, Dean can't help himself, and ducks out into the hall to hide his laughter. Lance opens his mouth and blurts out.

"Were not-" at the same time as Keith shouts. "We don't-" and with that the all shuffle out of the room Keith and Lance with furious blushes on their faces.

Dean is sitting on the ground in the hallway, his fist shoved in his mouth in an attempt to muffle the sound, rocking backward and forward with silent giggles.

"Dean, it's time to go, and I'm pretty sure you promised someone something on the way in." Cas helps Dean to his feet and Lance raises an eyebrow, recovered slightly from the... incident...

Making good on his promise, the minute they get back to the desk, Dean goes behind it, pins the girl to the wall, and kisses her. Even though nobody here was technically into Dean, they couldn't help but admire his technique. He was good. The second he let go and turned away, the girl leaned against the desk for support, staring after him the whole way out the door.

"You guys coming or what?" Dean calls back like he hasn't just done anything that isn't normal. The other three follow, Cas first because he isn't really fazed by it, then Keith knowing Dean better then Lance so it doesn't really faze him, but Lance has to shake his head a few times. _How could dean just walk up and- and, and just do that?_ Lance jogs to catch up walking close to Keith to makes sure he was ok.

He helps Keith into the car before he gets in himself. He insists he buckles the seat belt for him and he helps him unbuckle it when they get home and helps him out.

Grinning in a self satisfied sort of way, Dean unlocks the door to let them all in. "If I went back later and asked her to sleep with me, do you think she'd say yes?"

"Yes." both Cas and Keith answer, but Lance on the other hand looks at him in shock.

"What kind of question is that? That is fucked up!" Lance says, the events of the day catching up to him and his adrenaline pumping.

Dean looks back at him, startled. "It's not like I'm gonna offer her a relationship and not follow through, I'll make sure she knows exactly what she's getting. Besides, since I don't got a lot of worth past this-" he waves a hand up and down himself "-I doubt she wants anything else anyhow. It'll be entirely up to her."

"I'm just-" Lance cuts himself off. He doesn't even know what he was gonna say, he created the whole "rival" thing with Keith because he was jealous of his looks and just him in general, and now he finds himself being jealous of Deans confidence. "I'm just gonna go make dinner." Lance mumbles walking into the kitchen to make big ass pot of ramen.

Dean almost lets out a sigh of relief when Lance stops talking. He didn't mean to mention that he doesn't have any worth past his body, and he wasn't looking forward to another pep talk on all the other things that make him important. He's gotten enough of those from Sam, and now he can't hear them without thinking of him. Besides, they're completely untrue anyway. He _doesn't_ have any worth past his body.

Keith lies down on the couch, he lied to Lance when he said he was fine and could walk himself, his head is killing him. He places an arm over his face and tries not to cry from the pain, he has never really gotten a concussion before believe it or not from his many adventures in space, and if he did, they went away first when placed in a healing pod.

A second later, he feels a hand nudge his arm and he brings it away from his face. Dean's holding out some aspirin with a look on his face that says he understands. Cas is holding the squishiest pillow he could find with a look on his face that says something soft always helps.

"Thanks." Keith whispers, not wanting Lance to hear him and worry about him more. He takes them and dry swallows about four of the pills then hugs the pillow sitting up a bit more.

Cas nods and goes to help Lance with the ramen. Dean sits down on the floor by the couch like an adorable, green-eyed watchdog and starts cleaning one of his guns.

"Have you ever had ramen before?" Lance asks Cas from curiosity.

Cas shakes his head. "No. I came up with soup, but I've never had this variety."

"You came up…. With soup?" Lance furrows his brow at the pot of water that wasn't boiling yet. He was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Cas had helped create more than like, half the things he used on a daily basis.

Cas nods. "Since I couldn't get Michael to give up on cold and agree to sunshine snow, I thought I should give you all a way to warm up. That's also why I made cocoa and marshmallows, for the cocoa and the fire." Lance held a finger to Cas's lips.

"Shhh," he said softly, "I can't take all that in at once. Slow down amigo de plumas."

Cas frowns at the nickname. He knew what the Spanish meant, he'd helped create the language, after all, but he didn't get why Lance was calling him that. "There aren't any feathers on me, Lance." It was like when Dean told him to move his feathery ass. It didn't make any sense.

"There aren't?" Lance looked slightly upset, he thought he was so clever coming up with that nickname.

"There used to be," Cas says, "but when you fall, you lose your wings. Well, technically, they're torn from you. You can still see where mine were, but… there aren't any feathers any more, really. The remains of a few, I suppose." Lance winces. Now he feels bad. He had a backup nickname which was winged friend, but that's probably worse.

Cas can see how uncomfortable Lance is, and guesses the reason. "It's fine. You can still call me those things if you want. It's nice reminder of how it used to be." He turns, and his back brushes against a cabinet, right between his shoulder blades, and he winces slightly. He forces his hand to stay at his side, instead of going to his back. Where his wings used to be. It still hurts, but he isn't about to tell anybody that.

Lance pouring in the ramen as the water started to boil, he is gonna put his brain to work on finding a new nickname for his best friend.


	13. Blue Eye'd Boy's

****Time skip sponsored by: wings and feathers that once were****

Before eating dinner with the rest, Cas says he needs to go wash his hands, but it's really just an excuse.

Once he's in the bathroom, he pulls off his trench coat, suit jacket, tie, white shirt, and turns around. You really can still see where his wings were. More so than he's really thought about. And there are still a few feathers attached to the scars. Ink black, that shine blue when they catch the light. The same blue as his eyes. They were beautiful wings. He misses them more than he cares to admit, and it still hurts where he lost them. It's like having a scrape that just won't heal, only worse. He knows he fell because he rebelled - again - but he doesn't see what he's done to deserve this kind of cruelty. They were supposed to be his brothers and sisters. And they were supposed to be angels. He supposes that what Dean read him out of a book once is true. Goodness is not kindness, and there is nothing crueler than virtue.

Unfortunately, he's in the bathroom long enough for Lance to wonder if he's okay. And even more unfortunately, he didn't lock the door. So when Lance knocks, he panics.

"Cas, buddie, you ok?" Lance starts to open the door slightly.

Cas scrambles for his trench coat, but all he succeeds in doing is knocking it into the bathtub. Turning to grab it, his back and the remains of his wings are perfectly visible in the mirror. And, by extent, from the door. Lance gasps and closes the door.

"Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry." Lance continues to repeat the word all the way back to the kitchen where he sits and hangs his head low enough so no one can meet his eyes.

Cas climbs into the bathtub and hides under his trench coat, tears starting to pour down his face, faster and faster and faster. He isn't going to leave this bathtub and he isn't going to come out from under his trench coat and he isn't going to go out of the bathroom for dinner. Not now, not ever. Not if the sight of what happened caused Lance to react like that. He's afraid he ruined it, ruined everything, ruined just how close he and Lance started getting. In a way, he really is like a child.

"Dude." Keith says looking at Lance in this distraught position. "Are you ok?" Lance just shakes his head slightly in response.

"I walked in on Cas in the bathroom," Lance whimpers, "and he was half naked." he says even quieter.

Dean snorts into his bowl. "Ha! Payback for all the times he did the same thing to me! Now who wants personal space? And for everyone to learn to knock?" Lance turns to jello and slinkies out of his chair onto the floor and groans taking a deep breath before letting it out.

"I gave him the nickname feathery friend in Spanish and now I feel bad because he told me he doesn't have feathers anymore and he doesn't have wings either and I feel really really bad when he might have pieces of feathers still there from where his wings used to be, but then I walked in on him looking at his back in the mirror and I don't know what to do. I feel like I'm the worst person in the world I gave Keith a bloody nose and made Dean want to kill himself and I spent all my christmas bonus on gifts and two trees and ramen and I don't know what to do… " Lance's voice trails off. He only lets it all out when he's on the edge and then Lance starts to cry.

Dean quickly thinks back through the tirade. He's gotten good at sifting through this stuff, what with Sam's old habit of just saying it all in one go like that. "First of all, Cas really isn't going to hold that against you. Yeah, he's hurt, but he's not going to be mad at you in any way. Keith's bloody nose was an accident. How many presents did you buy to spend all that money? Why did you buy two trees if you didn't have cash? It's a miracle when there's even one, and…" he pauses, making sure Lance is listening to him. "You didn't make me want to kill myself. I've wanted to die since I was four. That is not your fault. So don't you dare go blaming yourself for it."

"I just want to make everyone happy." Lance whispers through his tears, answering every question at the same time.

Dean gets down on the floor next to Lance, finally letting his gentle big brother side that he's put away since Sammy died show through. "Someone once told me that I couldn't save everyone. I didn't listen to them, and I doubt you'll listen to me when I say this. But it's the honest truth. You can't make everyone happy. Sometimes there are things outside of your control and if your happiness hinges on the happiness of others, then you're going to be absolutely miserable for the rest of your life. Believe me, I know. I spent so much time trying to keep my dad and Sammy happy that I forgot to think about myself, and I think you've done the same thing, and I think you don't deserve that." _I do_. Dean adds silently. _But you don't_.

"But-" Lance looks up but is cut off by Keith.

"No 'buts' Lance. Now get in your chair and eat your damn ramen." Keith commands, knowing that when he's in this state, he needs someone to create a stable environment for him. Rules, commands, and other thing. Bed times, meal times. Schedules all around. Lance nods and sits in his chair.

"I don't want to make Cas upset." Lance says slowly stirring his food. "What should I do?"

Dean gets up. "One second. I need to go… assess the…" he was about to say damage, but he can tell that isn't a good idea in this situation. "The mood of that little trench-coat wearing psycho." he finishes lamely, and heads back to the bathroom.

A couple minutes later, he comes back and sits down again, shaking his head. "He won't answer me. I think he's crying." Dean looks sincerely freaked out by the concept. Lance frowns deeper.

"Should I… should I go say sorry again?" Lance offers.

"Don't do that." Dean says. "He doesn't like to have people apologize to him when he doesn't think they have anything to apologize for. It doesn't make sense to him. I think the best thing to do would be to just go and be willing to listen. He's one of the younger angels, and after Gabriel left heaven, I get the sense he was kind of lost in the shuffle. Ignored. He needs to know somebody cares how he feels other than me." Lance nods, takes a large swig of his ramen noodles and stands up.

Lance walks to the bathroom door, it's open slightly. He opens it just enough to walk in and sit next to the bathtub where Cas is curled up in a ball under his trench coat.

"Cas, I'm so-." Lance catches himself, "I-I want you to know, I'm here to listen."

Cas sniffles a couple times in response. "Why? Nobody, but Dean ever listens. Gabriel used to, but he left me. All alone."

"You don't understand Cas." Lance starts to explain. "You're not alone anymore. You've got me and Keith and Dean. We're your friends and we care about you."

Cas looks up at him, his blue eyes like a shattered stained glass window. "That's what Gabriel said. It wasn't true."

"Cas." Lance takes a breath thinking of how to say what he wants to say. "I'm not trying to say I know how you feel and I'm not trying to say I know what you've been through, but it doesn't matter to me, I care about you just the same and I know Dean and Keith do to. They might have a harder time showing it, but… We love you Cas."

Cas is silent for so long that Lance starts to think he's not even going to answer, but finally he opens his mouth and says, "I just don't understand why. They were my brothers and sisters. Why did they do this to me?" Lance wrings his hands and bites his lip.

"Family is complicated." Lance starts. "A long time ago in earth time I had a family." Lance pauses willing himself not to cry more. "It's hard to live with people, but I learned from going into space it's harder to live without them. Sometimes they do things because they think it's the best for you. Even if you think otherwise. At times you feel like you don't belong- because your so different from the rest of them, but no one is the same, we're all different." Lance pauses to take a few deep breaths.

"When I came back to earth the first time it had only been a few years on earth, even though it was only one for me but my abuela was passed on," Lance chokes up a little, "but I felt torn between Voltron and home, I didn't know where to go or what to do, but my family loved me and they told me I should go to space and save the universe once more. So I did." a tear slides down Lance's check, "but it took too long and, when I got back, Voltron was a myth, the Galra were a myth, and my family." Lance takes a deep breath. "My family was gone and I wish I could regret going to space, but I don't because in the long run it was better for everyone because they didn't die at the hands of someone, they dies from old age and things, but they were safe, and that was because of my absence. Even though it was hard, it was the right thing."

"I guess that makes sense." Cas mumbles. "I fell because the angels wanted to destroy the world. They felt humanity had become too corrupted, and they wanted to start over. Dean and Sam and I stopped them, but they still wanted to punish me." He's silent for a second. "It wasn't for my good. They just wanted power, and they wanted me out of the way." He glances up at Lance. "Your family… what were their names?"

"Well, it's a long list, my oldest sister was Veronica, my older brother was Luis, and my younger brother, well, line gets fuzzy, his name was Marco. Then Others about a hundred or so cousins and in laws and grandparents and things but we all lived together."

"Your last name's McClain, isn't it?" Cas double checks and Lance nods. "I met some of your family, then. When I was leading souls to their heaven. I remember thinking they were nice. In fact, I think your abuela asked about you." Lance's eyes widened.

"She did? What did she say?" Lance asked quickly sitting up more, he loved her almost more than the rest of his family, just because she treated him like a real person. Unlike his siblings, and parents sometimes, but he loved them all.

"She wanted to know where you were. If you were okay. She missed you." Cas says simply. Lance smiled, that made him feel a little better about his family. Out off all of them she was definitely the one who would ask about him.

"What did you tell her?" Lance asks thinking about his Abuela in heaven, dressed in white, as a divine being. Lance had never believed in such a thing, but now. He kind of had to.

"That you were still alive, as your soul wasn't in heaven yet. That when it was your turn, you could come see her. That she had to be patient, since there wasn't much else to do." Cas blinks back some tears. "I wished I could give her more. She loved you so much." Lance smiles and sits up a bit more.

"I know." he said with a sigh of content. "There are people who love you too you know." he looks into Cas's eyes. "Now do you wanna come eat some ramen?"

Cas pauses, then shakes his head. "I think I'm just gonna go to bed. I don't want to be with anyone else right now."

"Alright." Lance respects his decision. "Do you… want a hug or something?" Lance offers as he stands up.

Cas looks at Lance for a second, then nods. He looks like a scared five-year-old, and he knows it and yeah, he really needs a hug. Lance smiles and wraps Cas in a hug once he's standing. Cas is short, and Lance is tall, and their hug is probably the most adorable thing in existence, no matter what anyone else says.


	14. Christmas Time, Is Near

****Time skip brought to you by: intense abandonment issues****

"Why do we have to get jobs again?" Dean asks driving down the strip mall glancing at his phone, where Lance was on the other end. Lance refused to leave Keith at home and refused to let him come with, his 24 hours were not up yet. So Dean is driving around with Cas looking for somewhere to work.

"Because you need to start earning a honest living. HONEST." Lance says through the phone.

"Be nice." they hear Keith chide.

Dean laughs. "I don't think I've ever done an honest thing in my life." Lance makes a sound that sounds like laughing mockery. A fake laugh.

"Ha ha. Find a job, and come home when you have one." Lance says before promptly hanging up the phone, leaving Dean and Cas to their own devices.

"Great," Dean bitches, "What the hell are we supposed to do? I don't know the first thing about getting a job. The last thing I did that I called a 'job' was ganking that ghost right before we got the apartment."

"I heard Keith tell you that it was easy this morning. You just walk in and ask if their hiring, and if so, you ask for an application." Cas says putting the phone away that he was holding on speaker phone so they could both talk if needed.

Dean looks around in desperation. He doesn't wanna work somewhere stupid. What if he wound up stuck in that stupidass chick shop with all the jewelry that looked like a cupcake threw up all over it? Claire's? Then his face brightens. "Hey, it's a weapons store!" He quickly pulls the car over and gets out before Cas can stop him. "And look, the sign says help wanted!" He turns a bright smile on Cas. "I know everything there is to know about weapons! I know how to make a bottle opener out of a bullet casing! I figured it out when Dad wanted something else to drink, but our bottle opener had disappeared!"

"That's… interesting." Cas said, "_Your_ perfect for that job." Cas emphasises.

Dean caught his meaning immediately. "And you can work…" he glances around, and a petstore catches his eye. "There. You always talk about wanting a cat, no matter how many times I tell you no. Now you can work with them all the time! And you're great with other animals too. Remember that time I found you in that field playing with a bunch of foxes, bunnies, and those dogs that were supposedly running wild and eating chickens? Sure didn't seem wild with you, though." Cas smiles.

"Perfect." he says a wide happy smile on his face despite last nights occerences.

"Sweet." Dean looks rather satisfied with himself. Maybe he did something right for once.

Ten minutes later, he and Cas are back in the street, leaning against Baby. "So… neither of us has to work till after Christmas?" Dean double checks.

"Yep." Cas nods with a smile on his face, he nailed that application. Or whatever it was, the point is he got a job without help and he's proud of himself.

Dean turns his head and coughs into his elbow. He feels like he's coming down with something, but he doesn't want to mention it. "Since we don't have anything else to do, maybe we should go look for Christmas presents for Keith and Lance."

"Sounds fun, I already got one for Keith though, and I'm making Lance's, but I can help you look." Cas offers with a smile standing up off the car.

Dean nods. "Alright. C'mon, let's go."

They hop in the car and start off down the street. Dean makes a quick stop at a chinese store to buy Keith a ninja sword with red flames on it, since he just can't resist. Cas gives the credit card back, Dean slips it back in his wallet a weird look. The name on it definitely wasn't Dean Winchester. It said David Warner. More stealing. Again. Didn't Lance said something about honesty?

"It's David, remember?" Dean reminds him with a wink and a finger to the lips as they head out of the store. "Lance said it had some money on it till I got a real job."

Before they get back in the car, Dean freezes. "Cas! Lookit!" He's pointing across the street at a little outdoor flea market with a sign advertising fluffy blankets with lion hoodies attached. In assorted colors.

"Lance would love that blue one." Cas says admiring its craftsmanship.

Dean grins. "Man, and I thought I'd have hard time shopping for that overly happy son of a bitch." He walks up to the vendor. "How much for a blue one?"

The vendor glances at him. "They won't be in for another couple hours."

For just a second, Dean looks horrified. "Couple of _hours_?!" Then his expression clears. "Alright. We'll wait." He goes back to stand by Cas. "You can go home if you want. I'm staying." He turns his head sideways and muffles a sneeze.

"Are you feeling alright?" Cas asks lifting an eyebrow at his friend

"Believe me, I've been so much worse. I feel great." Dean says, but makes it a little unconvincing by coughing some more. Cas chalks it up to the cold weather in itself and shrugs it off.

"Alright." he says. "How long will it take to walk home?" Cas wonders out loud.

Dean shrugs. "Thirty minutes, maybe? Why?"

"I mean, I don't know if Keith and Lance should be left alone." Cas looks at Dean knowingly. "You know?"

Dean smirks. "You sure you wanna risk walking in on that?" Cas shrugs in response.

"It's nothing I haven't seen before." he says like it's normal.

Dean laughs so hard he practically falls over, which starts him coughing, and then laughing again. It's a good five minutes before he manages to say, "That's fair! You can see everything from heaven! Is it still porn if you're watching it from up there? Does that mean porn's okay? Or was it more of an accidental glimpses kind of thing?" Cas rolls his eyes at Dean dramatics.

"I created it, well, helped, I mean kind of. You know what, I'm gonna stop talking and just go and risk it or whatever." Cas says, showing the 'Lance' that's rubbed off on him.

So Cas heads off, leaving Dean in alternating fits of laughter and coughing.

**_sorry for the short chapter, buckle down and don't forget your tissues for the next couple. we are sorry but we are not ashamed..._**


	15. Sick

****Time skip brought to you by: coughter. (coughing and laughter... duh)****

Cas walks into the apartment to find Keith and Lance sitting on opposite ends of the couch. Looks like Dean was wrong about how fast they'd move. But then, Dean moves pretty fast himself. He needs to remember sometimes that other people aren't quite so quick. "Dean'll be home in awhile." he whispers. Keith's twenty-four hours are getting close to over, but they aren't quite there just yet. "He's just finishing up Christmas shopping."

"Oh, good to know." Lance says adjusting his sitting position. Lance and Keith just decided to sit in silence since they couldn't agree on a movie to watch together. Lance had offered "The Lion King", but Keith turned it down right away.

Cas sees the movie case sitting on the ground where the coffee table should be if Dean didn't landed on it, and walks over to pick it up. "Why is it called The Lion King? I know people generally say lions are the king of the jungle, but the majority of them don't even live in the jungle and tigers are by far more dangerous."

"Well, you see it's a movie about this pride of lions and the head of the pride has a son and raises him to be king, but then his uncle kills his dad and tries to kill him because he wants to be the head of the pride, so he uses the hyenas to help him, but the son, Simba gets away and lives in the jungle with his new friends Timon and Pumbaa who are a warthog and a meerkat. I won't spoil the rest of it, but that's the just of it." Lance says

Cas nods thoughtfully. He understands that. "Sounds depressing, but most good stories are at one point or another." Lance nods.

"Well, I think Disney isn't all that good." Keith says with a shrug

"Dean would agree with you," Cas says, "but I think that's just because he's bitter that his father wouldn't buy him Disney movies when he asked."

"Well that's too bad." Lance frowns. "You emo guys are missing out on some great songs." Lance shook his head with a sigh and smiled slightly. "I guess I need to _let it go, let it go!_" Lance started singing.

Cas looks around in confusion. "Let what go?" Keith just starts laughing maniacally and Lance chuckles along with him, except when Keith places a hand on his head and starts crying at the same times as laughing because of the pain. Lance jumps up and kneels next to him.

"Keith, stop, your gonna hurt yourself." Lance says placing a hand on his shoulder. Keith's laughter slows and he wipes some tears away and mutters

"Ouch." when he does Lance jumps up runs into the kitchen and comes back with an ice pack and some more medicine.

"Here." Lance says sliding in on his knees next to Keith. In different circumstances it would have been cool how he did that but Keith's honestly in too much pain to comment on it.

"I'm sorry." Cas says quietly. "I didn't mean to…" Lance quickly turns to him,

"No, it's not your fault, it's this emo ass's fault." Lance slaps Keith on the shoulder.

"Hey, that was my good arm." Keith says with a pouty face.

Cas just watches them with confusion. They're as bad as Dean, going from concerned to joking to serious and back to concerned again in a two minute period.

"Well it's not my fault you started hurting yourself now is it? It's your fault so you can deal with it." Lance looked at the time. "It's time to change the bandages on your arm." Lance says standing up, "I'll go get the stuff, you sit up, I'll be right back."

Cas walks over to Keith and helps him sit up, even though he doesn't particularly need it. Cas just hates watching people be hurt, when he could have healed him with a touch of his hand before he fell. Now, he can't do much of anything. "Are you okay?" he asks.

"I'm fine." Keith says as he sits up all the way, "how are you?" Keith turns his face to him with a smile.

"I'm fine too." Man, Dean's lies are coming easier and easier to him. "What's going on with you and…" Cas trails off and nods towards where Lance just disappeared. Keith's face turns a light shade of pink and he looks away.

"Nothing's going on." he says simply. "Why would you ask?" he lies shrugging deeper into the blankets Lance supplied him with.

Cas simply raises an eyebrow. How would Dean say this? "Do I look stupid to you?" Keith looks back to him with a surprised look on his face, he opens his mouth to respond but cuts himself short as Lance walks back in the room holding new gauze, ointment and some red hospital bandages.

"What are you guys talking about?" Lance asks kneeling in front of Keith to redo his arm bandages. Keith looks at Cas as if to say, don't tell him.

"Whether or not I look stupid." Cas offers. Dean has always said one of the best tricks to lying was to say something that was also technically true. As his brother had once said that he wasn't lying. He was simply avoiding certain truths to deceive.

"Well you don't." Keith and Lance say at the same time, Lance doesn't pause in his work but Keith blushes a little more and looks as far away from Lance as he can. He gets more like this when he's sick, or injured, and he hates it. Shiro said it's like he has his own period, but that's impossible. He's a man. But Shiro insisted he acts like it, he's emotional and acts like, 'this' around cute guys, or his crush.

Cas nods. "As long as that's settled." The way he says it, you'd think they were having a serious discussion about how many nuclear bombs they were each allowed, and when it was okay to fire them.

"You make it sound like we're planning the end of the world." Lance says slowly removing Keith's old bandages, Keith let out a soft hiss.

"That doesn't sound like this." Cas says decisively. "I've done that before, and there's usually a lot more yelling involved." Lance is silent for a moment and Keith gives Cas a strange look. Keith changes the subject.

"So how long do you think until Dean gets home?" he asks trying to distract himself from the pain of the first bandage change.

"How long have we been standing here?" Cas asks. He never was good with time. Time's not an important thing when you're an angel and you're going to live forever anyway. At least, he was going to. Lance thinks for a moment.

"You got home about twenty minutes or so ago." he answers. "Maybe closer to thirty."

Cas does the math in his head. "Then he should be home in about an hour. Maybe an hour and fifteen minutes."

"Ok, what should we have for dinner?" Lance asks looking to Keith more then Cas, but still open for suggestions from them both.

"Nothing too hard on Keith's stomach." is all Cas says. Keith thinks for a moment, turning his mouth in a animated way as he does so. Lance smiles at it.

"More ramen?" he asks his voice in an adorable high voice, well, high for Keith.

Cas is forcibly reminded of a puppy. Lance just nods and goes back to work biting his lip to suppress giggles. Lance just can't believe how cute Keith is, it should be against the law.

****This time skip brought to you by: forcible puppy reminders and giggle suppressing lip biting****

They're halfway through dinner when Dean finally comes in the door, clutching a couple shopping bags, looking absolutely miserable. He goes to his room, deposits the shopping, and comes back to the table, sniffling pathetically. He sits down next to Cas and pokes at the bowl of ramen they'd left out for him.

"You don't look so good." Lance mentions looking over at him, Dean had slight bags under his eyes and his clothes were slightly damp from the snow.

"I'm fine." Dean says, the automatic answer he's given for so long. Then pretty much proves himself wrong by turning his head into his elbow and coughing for a straight minute. Lance looks at Keith skeptical and asks what he should do with his eyes and a shrug and a nod toward Dean. Keith responds with a shrug as well, he's ill and can't read body language any better than he could before.

"Maybe you shouldn't have stood out in the snow for two hours just to buy a present." Cas suggests delicately.

"Maybe we should all go to bed early, I think we could all use it." Lance says taking his empty bowl and Keith's to the sink and rinsing them out before setting them on the counter.

Cas nods. "Good idea." He picks up his bowl, then glances at Deans. "Are you finished with that?"

Dean shakes his head tiredly. "You all go to bed. I'll just finish up out here." Cas nods as Lance helps Keith stand and go to bed.

Once everyone else is gone, Dean looks around, doing his best to muffle another sneeze in his elbow. _Damn. There's no way Keith will be alright with this in the room next to him all night. What should he do?_

Then it comes to him.

When he was a kid, his dad would come home from hunts wanting some peace and quiet. A sick Dean did not fit in those parameters. Coughing. Sneezing. Puking. All those things. So, sometimes, Dean had slept outside. Dean resented it at the time, but now he can see that maybe there was actually some wisdom in it. Maybe he can't fix Keith's concussion, but at the very least, there's the option of doing what he can to keep it from getting worse.

Leaving his bowl where it is, thinking that maybe somebody could microwave it in the morning - he and Sammy had done it all the time when food was short, hell even when food wasn't short - he stands up and heads over to the back door. He's in for a miserable night, he knows that, but better that he has a miserable night than Keith. Than anyone, really. So, pulling his jacket tighter around him, he slips out onto the back porch and curls up on the ground.

I did my best at spelling the Disney characters names, so let me know if I did it wrong, other than that, what did ya think? I know this one was kinda short, but I don't want to make them too long, let me know what you thought of this chapter! love you all! -Sam 


	16. Hypothermia is real

****Time skip brought to you by: Dean's inability to take care of himself****

Lance opens his eyes and lets out a long low sigh from having to wake up, but he needs to go make waffles for Cas. Lance gets up and tries not to wake up Keith as he gets dressed and leaves the room, he slides on his blue lion slippers and shuffles into the kitchen, he yawns stretching his arms over his head, but stops suddenly when he sees Dean's unfinished bowl of ramen, no more finished then it was last night.

Not a good sign.

Cas suddenly comes running out of his room. "Lance, where's Dean? He's not in our room."

"Uh, I'm not sure, he didn't finish his dinner, where would he have gone?" Lance looks around worriedly, he literally has no idea where Dean can possibly be, but then he sees someone's silhouette through the foggy glass door to the small landing in the back. "Is that Dean?" Lance wonders out loud.

Cas glances over and sees what Lance notices. "He couldn't possibly be that stupid, could he?" Walking over to the door, he pulls it open, and for just a second, he freezes in shock. "Or maybe he could."

"OH MY GOD DEAN!" Lance rushes over to him and yanking him up after shoving his hands under his arms. "Get inside right now!" Lance drags the half frozen man into the living space and throws him on the couch. "Take off your cold clothes, Cas go get him some fresh ones." Lance commences the two of them.

Dean's a mess. His lips are blue, he's so cold, and he's shaking so hard, he can barely pull his shirt off, but he manages it all the same. He looks up at Lance with sleepy green eyes, and for just a second, he might be three years old. "I - I'm so-sorry." he says, his words broken up from the shivering. He isn't sure exactly what he's done to upset the other man, but he can tell there's something and he knows from long painful experience that it's always better to apologize.

"I'm not mad Dean," Lance looks and Dean's fingers which are white except the tips which are bright red, then checks his pulse, it's so slow, Lance wonders if it's even there. "Dude, I think you have hypothermia." Lance says softly. "Shit." he swears under his breath running into the bathroom and stopping the water, then his room and grabbing as many blankets as he can and then dumping them on Dean. "We need to slowly bring your temperature back up."

"I d-don't got hypo-hypother-hypothermia." Dean says, his words slurring together like the night he had gotten drunk. "Dad said th-that's n-not a re-real problem." Lance scowled at him.

"You could die, Dean. it is a real problem, and no one in this apartment wants you that way, so let's get your temperature back up." Lance says wrapping the blankets around Dean tighter than grabbing a heating pad or seven from his closet, he plugs them all in and put them on low, shoving them under the blankets to touch Deans skin and help raise his body heat to a normal temperature.

"Th-that's hot." he mumbles, trying to push them away. Then just starts coughing again and honestly can't particularly stop.

"God, Dean, just try to breath, where is Cas?" Lance stands and heads for Dean's room. He opens the door, slightly expecting to find Cas looking through Dean's clothing not knowing what to grab, but instead found him crying on Deans bed, his face in a pillow.

"Cas." Lance says softly sitting next to him. "Are you ok?" ha asks, Cas shakes his head no.

"I can't help him, I want to help him." he cries into the pillow. Lance doesn't quite know what he's talking about but knows the feeling. He puts an arm around Cas's shoulders.

"You can help, I need you to show me where Dean keeps his clothes, so we can get him in something that will help him warm up." Lance squeezes his shoulders comforting and Cas nods. He stands and helps Lance get him some clothes then helps him bring them out to Dean.

"Hey Cas." Dean says his eyes half lidded. "When did you get here?" he says so softly Lance could barely hear him. Cas and Lance ignore his random rambling and get him dressed Lance gets a tub of warm water to put his feet in while keeping the heating pads on his upper body and legs, they turn up the heat so the air will be warm and heat up his lungs and air passages. Lance goes in the kitchen telling Cas to keep an eye on him and keep him awake and talking while he makes some hot cocoa and heats up his ramen from last night.

His coughing is bad, his voice was low and slow, his heart slowly becomes stronger after he eats his ramen and starts warming up from the inside as well. The hot cocoa helps a lot. But it's still taking a little longer then Lance hoped. He knows he should have called 911, but he doesn't have the money to pay for that, not after Keith's arm and concussion.

Lance checks Deans temperature one more time, it's almost normal, now they just need to make sure it doesn't drop, the heating pads are on hot, and wrapped onto Dean under some blankets, they let him fall asleep, because it's quite obvious he didn't during the night. He kept saying things out of the ordinary, but didn't respond when they would talk back to him.

"Lance~" Keith groans from their bed room. Lance looks over his shoulder.

"Cas could you keep an eye on Dean so i can tend to Keith?" he asks, Cas nods eagerly and Lance gets up to go see how Keith is.

"Lance my head huuuuuuurts." Keith whines sitting up in bed, Lance grins getting an idea that might help. He walks over and sits on the bed next to his legs, and softly kisses his forehead.

"Better?" Lance asks softly. Keith's eyes remain closed. He isn't sure if what just happened really happened, if it was a dream opening his eyes would end it and he doesn't want to do that. "Keith?" Lance brings him back to the present.

"Hmm?" he opens his eyes half way to look at him. "Yeah Lance?" he asks, truthfully he forgot all about his headache. Lance smiles at him.

"How you feeling buddie?" Lance asks patting his leg softly. Keith shrugs slightly.

"I'm good," he says, "how are you." he's obviously drowsy, and injured, he doesn't know how to stop himself from being like this when he's sick or hurt. It just happens.

'_You know, the norm, I just save Dean's life, he was on the back porch all night long… he's got hypothermia.' _Lance thinks about saying, but he doesn't want Keith to worry, so he doesn't. "I'm good, I'm just gonna make some waffles, Cas has never had them before." Lance says with a small smile.

"Mmm, waffles." Keith hums closing his eyes again. Lance giggles, not able to suppress it. "That was cute." Keith points at him and Lance's breath hitches in his throat.

"What?" Lance asks Keith puts his hand down but doesn't answer. "What did you just say?" Lance asks more curious then angry or anything. Keith just giggles in response.

"Mmm, waffles" he giggles some more. Lance rolls his eyes and stands up, he shoves Keith good arm back slightly.

"Get some rest you idiot." Lance chuckles, Keith nods and lies back down to wait for waffles. Lance checks on Dean before trying to get breakfast started. He changes into a tank top and shorts due to the heat of the waffle maker and the apartment. He continues to check in with his two patents as he also cooks breakfast for Cas. Lance would say he should get some kind of award for that, but right now he's too worried about everyone he lives with to even think about himself, not even once, even when he burns his hand, he hears Keith call for him and doesn't bother to even run it under cold water before going to Keith's side.

Soon Dean wakes up, he isn't talking much, but Cas and Lance are able to get him to eat a waffle without to much trouble. Lance then brings some into Keith, who's fallen asleep again, Lance slightly panics that he's entered a coma and shakes him awake, Keith sits up straight.

"What? Who is it? Who's attacking?" he says holding out his knife that he keeps under his pillow when he sleeps. Lance chuckles a bit and takes his knife setting it on his night stand.

"No one is attacking, Keith. I brought you waffles." Keith looked at the plate in his hands, the waffle he had brought had butter on it and a little syrup. Lance thought waffles would be ok since he was doing better, but they would start out with one.

"Yummie." Keith took the plate and crossed his legs placing it on his lap. Lance smiled and went out to make sure Cas got some waffles too. He made Cas a plate and brought it into him so he could eat while he watched Dean. Lance then took his plate into his room to eat with Keith.

"So Keith, guess what." Lance sat next to Keith on the bed, Keith took a small bit and looked up at Lance through his bangs. He shrugged. "It's Christmas eve." he smiled at him and Keith smiled even bigger than Lance thought was possible.

"Yeeeeeeesssssssssss." Keith whispered. "Can we make Christmas cookies?" he asked. Lance looked Keith up and down wearing a large sleep shirt and some flannel PJ pants. His hair was a total mess, it hadn't been brushed through since the crash, but he was adorable.

"Sure, we can make Christmas cookies." Keith grinned around his full mouth and Lance added. "After I help you get ready for the day." Keith's shoulders sank, but he nodded.

"Alright Lance." he pouted. Lance brought out their dirty dishes and then came back to help Keith only to find he had started without him, but lacking the mental strength to finish, he had his shirt over his head with his arms still in it, and was stuck. "Lance." he muttered when he heard him come back. "I'm stuck."

"I can see that." Lance walks over to him and yanks his shirt off the rest of the way. "There you go, now you can see." Lance said, he helped him take the pants off. "Would you like to change your boxers by yourself?" Lance asked in a joking manner.

Keith wasn't to far gone that he couldn't get embarrassed, his cheeks turned a light shade of pink and he nodded, Lance chuckled and stepped out of the room and Keith changed his undergarment in privacy. It only hurt his arm a little bit, he had gotten second degree burns up to his elbow and had to change the bandages every day, for three weeks.

"All finished?" Lance asked from the other side of the door. Keith nodded before realizing Lance couldn't see.

"Yep." he said popping the 'P'. Lance came in and helped him get dressed for the day in something that could accommodate with the warm house. Lance brings Keith into the kitchen ties an apron around him and tells him to sit in a kitchen chair. Lance goes into check on Dean who is scowling angrily at the floor.

"Dean?" Lance crouches next to him, Dean ignores him. "How you doing buddy?" Lance rests a hand on Dean knee.

nice cliff hanger? I hope you enjoy it, the next chapter will start off right where this one ended, stay tuned! Let me know what you think is going to happen next and what your favorite part was, I can't wait to see! lots of love! -Sam 


	17. Mistletoe

"Dean?" Lance crouches next to him, Dean ignores him. "How you doing buddy?" Lance rests a hand on Dean knee.

That gets Dean's attention, and he looks up, shocked. He remembers being called buddy when he was very small. It's been so long, he's half forgotten it, but for just a second, Lance's words bring back an image of his mother crouching next to him and placing a hand on his knee in much the same way, calling him buddy and asking if he was okay.

Lance barely knows him. Why's he treating him this way? Come to think of it, why does he care that Dean spent the night outside? Why does he care if Dean's cold or sad or hurt?

It's a second before he can force his voice to work, but finally he manages to get out, "I'm doing." Lance looks at him skeptical.

"Well are you feeling any better, do you wanna talk about it?"

"What is it with you people and thinking talking fixes everything?" Dean says, looking back down. "Does it really matter if you say it? It's still there. It doesn't fix _anything_."

"At least tell me what drove you to sit outside in the freezing cold all night long without a blanket." Lance argues moving to sit cross legged on the floor.

"I didn't wanna bother Keith." Dean says. "So I just did what I used to when I was little when Dad didn't want me to bother him."

"What do you mean bother Keith, he's getting way better, he even ate a waffle, nothing you do 'bothers' us."

Dean coughs and sniffles pitifully before answering. "I was coughing and sneezing, and that's kinda loud. I wanted Keith to sleep, and I didn't wanna give him a headache or something. It used to work fine when I was little, I thought it'd work okay now too."

"Dean, a little coughing isn't going to hurt anyone, except maybe you, you should have told me, I could have given you some medicine and it would have been fine. Look Dean." Lance takes a deep breath keeping his calm voice in check. "Were not your dad. You've got to remember that. Were your friends and we care about you, we don't want you sick, or hurt or dead, and that's something you'll have to live with now."

Dean looks at Lance for a second, then finally admits, "I don't know how." Lance bites his lip and thinks for a moment.

"Well, the first step is gonna have to be accepting your dad is gone, and that we aren't him." Lance says softly, standing back up to his feet.

"I know he's gone, it's just…" Dean looks away for a second. "Shit, Sam explained this to me once. He called it programming or something. I didn't really get it. He's the one who went to college, he understands all that."

"It's gonna take awhile to do what he was talking about, but yeah, you're basically programmed the way you are, and you need a re-programming, I get it, so just work extra hard to see when your doing one of those things, and then stop yourself, tell us when it happens and we can help you catch it." Lance says he looks over his shoulder to the kitchen to where he left Keith.

Dean laughs a little. "You sound like my Uncle Bobby." Lance laughs knowing all about uncles, Coran had been like his favorite uncle, in space, but now Lance is on earth and he's still out there. Lance wrings his hands and glances back to the kitchen for a second.

"You okay?" Dean asks. If there's one thing he recognizes, it's nervous gestures. Lance bites his lip, he doesn't want to cut the conversation with Dean short, that would seem rude, but Keith hasn't made any noise in a while and Lance wanted to check on him.

"Y-yeah, I'm fine." Lance said shoving his hands in his pockets. To stop his nervous tick.

Dean coughs a little, then says, "Bullshit. You can go, it's fine. Whatever it is you need to do, I'm sure it's more important." Lance gives him a look.

"You did it again." Lance says. "I'm just gonna check on Keith, I'll be right back." Lance says going into the kitchen, leaving Dean with Cas as company.

Dean stares after him, confused. He did it again? That wasn't programming, that was fact. Right?

"How are you feeling Dean?" Cas tries from his end of the coach.

"I'm g-" Dean pauses. "I've been worse." he amended. There. Progress. He still sounded okay, but he wasn't technically lying anymore. Cas smiles.

"So better?" he asks

Dean nods. "Better." He glances towards the kitchen. "What do you think they're doing in there?" Cas shrugs.

"I don't know." Cas smirks. "Ten bucks says I can get them to kiss by the end of the day." Cas holds back laughter.

Dean shakes his head. "You're on." Cas grins, he had read something the other day, about mistletoe.

"Where can I get mistletoe." he asks with a sly smile.

"Why the hell would I know where to buy mistletoe?" Dean asks. "I couldn't even tell you where to get normal Christmas decorations."

"Is mistletoe not normal?" Cas asks confused. "Well in that case Lance probably has some in the bottom of his closet, he has everything there."

"Do I even wanna know why you know that?" Dean scoots away a little bit, trying to muffle a sneeze.

"I mean, he had boxes of tree decorations in there, and lots of blankets, and like five heating pads." Cas points to the heating pad in Dean's lap.

Dean glances down at it. "Fair, but now I'm scared of the bottom of Lance's closet. What else do you think he's got in there?" Cas shrugs.

"I just hope he has mistletoe." Cas says standing, he creeps to the kitchen doorway, peaks in then dashes down the hall to go through Lance's closet. All the while Dean is trying not to laugh for fear of breaking out into a coughing fit.

Unfortunately, that didn't really work out, so he just shoved his face in a pillow and hoped nobody would notice, but that didn't work either because Lance came in with a bottle of cold medicine.

"Dean, your coughing isn't going to get better unless you take some of this." Lance says pouring it into a small cup. "What were you laughing at… and where is Cas."

"Cas is learning to regret his life choices." Dean says, then glances over at the little medicine cup. "Whoa, I thought they only had those in movies."

"Ha ha, now down with it, or no Christmas cookies for you, and I think there's a package for you on the porch if your up to getting it, if not I'll grab it while you take the drugs.

Dean obediently took the cup, trying to process all of that at once. "First of all, why the hell is there a package for me? I've gotten maybe two pieces of mail in my entire life. Second, you have Christmas cookies? Like, legitimate Christmas cookies? Not cardboard cookies with a bunch of marker on them? And I've had actual drugs, this doesn't have as much kick."

Lance gives him the stink eye. "Just take it, I'll grab the box for you." Lance says walking to the door, he opens the door and lift the Christmas gift off the welcome mat and then hands it to Dean in exchange for the empty medicine cup.

Dean grabbed some salt out of the pocket of his jeans and raised it threateningly while he slowly pulled the present open. Then immediately poured it all over it. "If those assholes think they're gonna get me with a Christmas present, then they got another thing coming."

"Dean what are you doing?" Lance asked with a bored voice and a annoyed stare.

"Making sure it's not possessed or cursed or something." Dean says, looking up like it's the most natural thing in the world. "It's happened before. There was this one time, when we were kids, and I didn't check a package, and the dinosaur toy almost ripped Sammy's throat out, and Dad made me sleep on the floor for a month-" He freezes. "I - um - I mean - I did it again, didn't I?"

Lance nods. "Yep. Just enjoy it please, Keith and I are making Christmas cookies and where actually is Cas?" Lance looks over his shoulder to the hall for a moment.

"Looking for mistletoe." Dean says. "And you were serious about the cookies? I thought that was a joke."

"Nope not a joke, and why does he need mistletoe, where does he think he's gonna find some?"

"The bottom of your closet, since apparently that's where everything goes to die." Dean lifts the little mug out of the package. It had a bunch of classic cars imprinted on it. "Cool! More coffee and whiskey for me."

"Okie dokie then." Lance claps his hands together. "I'll just pretend I didn't hear that, and I'm gonna let Cas look, because I know he'll find it." Lance turns and heads for the kitchen.

"Son of a bitch, you really do have mistletoe in the bottom of your closet?" Dean says. "Why don't you keep normal things down there? Like guns, salt, and crowbars?"

Lance turns and put a finger to his lips and backs his way into the kitchen without another word. Cas comes creeping down the hall with a smile on his face.

"Guess what Dean." he says excitedly

"You found Narnia in the closet too?" Dean guesses, but doesn't mention that he used to think that could actually happen and would heavily guard closets.

"What?" Cas asks dead pan, he literally had no idea what in the world that is. "What is… Narnia?"

"A magical land full of talking animals and bitchy witches. You get to it from the back of a closet." Dean smirks. "At least, you do in the book and the movie. Don't actually try. It's not real."

"Oh, you got my hopes up." Cas says with a smirk, he was learning how to be sarcastic, and he was actually really good at it. At least that's what Lance said.

"Alright, if you didn't find Narnia, did you find one of those secret passages that lead to a bunch of people with buttons for eyes? Don't let them sew your face, by the way. That'd be messy." Dean sneezes, but keeps smiling. _This is fun_.

"What?" Cas asks his eye widening and face full of concern. He may be good at speaking sarcasm, but that didn't mean he could understand it all time.

"I'd tell you that one's not real and it's only from that Coraline movie, but most stories have some basis in fact, and I actually did have to deal with the crazy button people once, so I'm being serious when I say you should at least watch your back," Dean pats Cas's shoulder reassuringly, "but I doubt that's a problem here."

"Uh, ok." Cas clears his thought. "I found the mistletoe." he says getting back to the subject. "Where should I put it?"

Dean glances around the apartment. "I can think of about twenty different places, but since I'm trying to get ten bucks out of you, there's no way I'm helping." He stands. "I'm going to see the Christmas cookies." He turns and heads off to the kitchen.

I hope you liked that chapter, it was nice and sweet for you guys, it's always calm before the storm... life is full of up's and downs... good things never last? ok, I'm trying to say something not so light and fluffy is just around the corner, so sit tight. but let me know what you loved most about this chapter! the first person to comment on this chapter will be mentioned in my next one! Lot's of love! -Sam 


	18. Christmas Cookies!

Dean glances around the apartment. "I can think of about twenty different places, but since I'm trying to get ten bucks out of you, there's no way I'm helping." He stands. "I'm going to see the Christmas cookies." He turns and heads off to the kitchen.

"Hey Dean." Keith says cheerfully from next to the sink, Lance looks over his shoulder at him and smiles.

"Dean, glad your up on your feet, can I get you anything?" he asks turning off the water and wiping his hands on his apron.

Dean shakes his head. "No, but Cas did remind me of something. Be careful about any random little secret passages you find, okay? Tell me, and I'll put down a salt line or something." Not that he hadn't already torn up some floorboards and put salt underneath them, then expertly put them back down. Because that would be ridiculous. Cough cough.

"Um, alright, anything else?" Lance asks as he starts to multi-task, they had just finished the batter and now he needed to roll it out so they could cut shapes in it. He spread some flour out on the table.

Dean stares longingly at all the cookie cutters, but doesn't want to ask. "No. Just… No Bloody Mary either."

"What?" Lance pauses to look at him not understanding the reference.

"You know, when you stand in the dark and say Bloody Mary into the mirror three times. And it supposedly summons her ghost and everything. I've only been one place where it actually works, but that was a huge mess, and better safe than sorry."

"Ok." Lance gets back to work and Keith comes to stand next to him Lance smiles at his presence next to him. Keith leans down next to him with his elbows on the table.

"Hi." Keith whispers to him and Lance smiles wider.

"Hi." Lance says back not whispering to him as he rolls out the dough the rest of the way. "Dean, you wanna cut some?" Lance looks up at him

Dean's eyes widened in shock. "Really?" He'd been starting to think they really didn't want him there, and that maybe he should go search the house for passages and lay down some more salt lines, since it was stupid that he hadn't done it before. Damn, he was slipping.

"Uh, yeah." Lance points to the many cookie cutters on the counter.

Dean smiles and starts going through them excitedly. He hasn't really decorated cookies since he was maybe three, even though he'd always tried for Sammy. Cardboard and markers was about the best they could do all but a couple times, but it was still something. He pauses at the little star shaped cookie cutter. It was Sammy's favorite. He sneezed into his elbow, glad for the excuse to hide his face, sure that any emotions he felt were written all over it.

"Ooo a star." Keith points to it, "Can I do a reindeer Lancey?" Lance spins to look at him. His eyes widened as he looked at Keith.

"Did you just call me Lancey?" he asks his voice cracking as he asks.

Dean smiles, trying to focus on the fact that it was funny and not that Keith sounded just like Sammy asking to make stars. "Pretty sure he did, man." Lance shoots Dean a glare.

"Dude, he's not even gonna remember much of anything he says after he's better, he gets like this when he gets a paper cut." Lance says. "Well not this bad, but it's like this every time he's sick or hurt, he doesn't even know what he's saying." Lance explains bringing some more cookie cutters over to the table and hands a reindeer one to Keith.

Dean stares at him for a second, surprised Lance isn't going to make use of this excellent opportunity for blackmail. "You're not even gonna film him being weird or something? The couple times I was high on whatever pain meds Dad finally decided to buy off the street, he took so many videos, then threatened to send them to the girls I thought were hot if I didn't-" he pauses. "I'm doing it again, aren't I?"

"Kind of," Lance said, "but the reason I don't do it is because-" Lance pauses, why doesn't he do it. "Uh, I guess I don't because I know he wouldn't like it." Lance shrugs helping Keith cut out his third reindeer and put it on the cookie sheet.

Dean thoughtfully starts cutting out stars. He's never met someone as considerate as that. Even he and Sam would take every opportunity to mess with each other like that, especially when they knew the other person wouldn't like it, but he needs to stop thinking about Sammy while he makes stars, or he might just start crying, and wouldn't that just be the perfect ending to a perfect mess?

"Shit." Keith mutters, he just cut two shapes on top of each other, "Shit shit shit, LANCE!" Keith cried out, "How do I fix this?" he whined throwing his head back frustrated with his lack of motor skill.

For a second, in his mind's eye, Dean saw Sammy holding out his busted toy train that Dean had stolen for him for Christmas, asking how to fix it, tears of frustration on his face. That, more than anything, is what makes him reach over to help Keith. "Just re-smoosh the dough and try again." he says calmly, helping him lump the screwed up shapes together and smooth them back out again to give it another try.

"Thank you." Keith says cutting into it again, "Hey, Dee, what shape are you making?" Keith asks looking over to his shapes.

Yeah, can't keep himself from crying anymore. He keeps his head down, not wanting anyone to see. "Stars, buddy. Just stars." Lance looks between the two of them, Dean has a single tear running down his cheek and Keith looks like a happy five year old.

"I like stars," Keith says, "Lancey I need a new shape, this one is boring now." Keith holds out the one he had just been using. Lance switches it for a candy cane shape.

Another tear slides down Dean's face, but he focuses on the cookies, trying to pretend everything's fine. It's like dealing with a little kid. And he's had lots of practice. "Your cookies look great, Ace." If there was one thing he will always do, it's call kid nicknames. It always seems to make them happy. It did, Keith smiled.

"I think this pan is ready." Lance takes it and puts it in the pre heated oven and replaces it with an empty one. "Cas!" Lance calls out, "You wanna help make cookies?"

Cas's head pops through the door. "I already made cookies. A long time ago." Then he sees what Dean and Lance are doing. "Oh, you mean make them here. Okay." He comes over at sits down, immediately grabbing the angel shape.

"Hey, that's you." Keith says barely connecting a few dots.

Cas nods. "It was."

Dean reaches out and ruffles Keith's hair. "Good job, buddy. You're real smart." Keith smiles big and then yawns.

"Lancey, I'm tired, how long till he cookies are gonna be done?" Keith leans into Lance and he goes stiff for a moment at the strange and sudden contact.

"Uh, fifteen minutes maybe." Lance says helping him sit back up in his chair, "Just be patent."

"If you want, I can tell you a story." Dean says. That used to be one of Sammy's favorite things to do.

"Yeah." both Cas and Keith say excitedly at the same time.

Dean tries to think of a good one. He doesn't honestly know tons of little kid stories, since he and Sammy and just taken whatever happened to them that was serious and made it sound happier. That was just going to have to do. He'd twist something that happened to him into something happy.

"This kid named… David and his daddy… James and his kid brother… Scotty moved into a new town. It was a little place, and all the people were really nice." That much was true. Sort of. "One day, David was driving down the street when he saw a girl sitting all by herself on a park bench in the rain. Her name was Jamie. He gave her a ride home, since she looked cold, and let her keep his jacket. Since she was pretty, he asked her to be his girlfriend. His daddy told him not to, but he liked her so much that he did it anyway. They were so happy."

Dean pauses. Maybe he shouldn't have gone with this one. "Do you guys want me to keep going?" he asked. Maybe they were bored. It was more of a grown up story, after all.

"Sure." Keith said helping fill the next cookie sheet after Lance re-rolled out the dough.

Dean took a deep breath. Anything for them, even if it hurt. "But it didn't stay that way. David's daddy told him that he wanted to move again. David was upset, because he didn't want to leave Jamie. He told his daddy that he was eighteen years old and could do whatever he wanted, and he wasn't going anywhere. His daddy was surprised, because he couldn't remember when David's birthday was. He wasn't a very good daddy. It was David's birthday that day. He tried to threaten David into staying, but David was a good poker player, and tried to make it sound like what his daddy was saying didn't matter. Finally, his daddy said they'd just talk about it more in the morning."

Dean glanced at the oven, wondering when the cookies would be done. Nope. Not even close. "David snuck out to talk to Jamie, but she wasn't at her house. Her mommy told David that Jamie was dead, and she was a ghost now. David didn't believe her, so he went to the cemetery to check, but his daddy had got there first, and he sent Jamie back to heaven." Shit, how was he supposed to make this happy? "David was upset, but...um… he realized that when he died, he'd get to go to heaven and be with her forever, instead of just for a little bit here on Earth. So, in the end, it was best for everyone. Maybe it wasn't perfect right then, but it would be… later on. And so David and Jamie will live happily ever after in heaven someday. The end." Shit, had he botched that, but at least he used his brain and left out the fight. And the blood. And the other stuff.

"I liked it, I hope David gets to be happy before he has to go to heaven." Keith says, Lance and Cas are both silent, knowing exactly what Dean did, taking his own story and changing it slightly. The oven beeped and Lance took the cookies out and put them on some cooling rakes. He put the next pan in and re-rolled the last of the dough only enough for like maybe three cookies, four if they really tried.

Dean did his best to smile at Keith. At least he'd liked it, even if Dean had royally screwed it up, just like he always did when he tried to do something nice. "I hope he does too, Ace. Now, what kind of cookie do you want to be your last one?" He glances down at the star, then holds it out. "You can use this one, if you want to." Don't think about Sammy, don't think about Sammy…

"Ok." Keith takes it and cuts out one more star, they each cut out their last cookie. Lance got out the frosting and set it on the table.

"Who wants to start frosting?" Lance asked with a smile on his face, he patted Dean on the shoulder in an attempt to comfort him as he passed.

Dean gave him a tight smile that said 'thanks for trying' and handed some frosting to Keith. "Here, buddy. Make em look real cool." Keith took the red frosting that was offered and then tried to dump the whole thing on the cookie Lance sat in front of him.

"Keith no." Lance took it from him and got frosting on his hand. "Now look what you did." Lance says teasingly holding his hand in front of Keith's face. Keith leans forward and licks some of the frosting off his hand.

"Yummie." Keith smiles. Lance doesn't move, that was super cute and it was turning him on super bad. Keith did it again and Lance bit his lip. He glanced at Dean with a 'what the hell do I do?' look.

Dean looked at him over the mound of green frosting on his own cookies that nobody'd thought to stop him from making and said, "Dude, just take your hand away and go wash it if you're not in the mood right now." He raised an eyebrow. "Or, y'know, too in the mood."

Cas, who was busy decorating his angel cookies in incredible detail, with different hair color and skin tones and even eyes, didn't pay any attention.

"Oh, right." Lance looked back to Keith who was licking up his ring finger. "Uh." Lance didn't move. "Keith." he said softly. Keith stopped and looked at him.

"Hmm?" he hums in response.

"Just, frost your cookie please." Lance says, Keith nods and goes back to his cookie, Lance is a blushing mess as he walks over to the sink and washes off his hands.

Cas sits back from the table triumphantly. "Look, I made everybody!" he says happily, gesturing to Lance to come over and look. As soon as everyone was paying attention, he started pointing at the different, highly detailed angels. "That's Michael, and Raphael, and Balthazar, and Samandriel, and Gadreel, and me, and Ezekiel, and…" he pauses for a second at the last one, that was a little apart from all the others. "And that's Gabriel."

"They look great, Cas. You're really good at this." Lance says, patting Cas's shoulder.

"I just hope they appreciate it." Cas glances up at the ceiling. Then he looks back to the little Gabriel cookie. "And that he even notices."

Dean smiles quietly. Man, family's complicated for everyone. "If they don't, then they're not worth it."

Keith leaned over to look at the cookies even more closely. "I really like them. They're pretty. Is that your family?"

Cas nods.

"Wow." Keith breathes. "Heaven must be so beautiful."

"It is." Cas says longingly.

"I'm so happy for David and Jamie, getting to live together up there forever someday."

Dean can't decide whether he feels touched or like he's been punched. He usually tries not to think about that eternity. When the story happened, he didn't believe in heaven, so he just assumed Jamie was lost to him forever. Now that he's been forced to believe through undeniable proof, he isn't sure how he feels about all this anymore. He has a choice to make when that day finally comes, about who he will spend eternity with in heaven - other than Sammy - after they're all dead. Jamie? Or Lisa and Ben? He physically cannot make that decision.

So he just goes back to putting way too much frosting and sprinkles on his cookies. Except for one.

This star he frosts very carefully, putting on just as much as Sammy liked. He places star sprinkles neatly along the edges, ignoring the few lonely tears that join them. In the middle, with white frosting as pure as his brother was when he was young, he carefully creates two words in his childish handwriting.

Sammy Winchester

* * *

well, there's that for you guys, I hope you liked that, I cried a little while we wrote this chapter, I don't know about Dean, but we both love writing for you guys, let us know what you loved and what you can't wait to see!

lot's of love! -Sam


	19. The Super Glue Of The Food World

****Time skip brought to you by: Christmas cookies****

Lance sent Dean out to get the mail a little after lunch and Dean opened the door to see a small gift sitting on the porch… yet again. The tag said To Dean on it without a signature.

"What the literal hell?" he says, poking the package with the tip of his boot. "This is not normal." He pulls out a whole container of salt and upends it on the package right as Lance comes over.

"Can you just open it without questions for once?" Lance sighs shaking his head and walking away again. "I mean it's Christmas for Pete's sake Dean."

"The worst things always happen on Christmas because of attitudes like that. And if you'd seen what I've seen, you wouldn't open a package without question if you didn't know where it came from either." Dean says simply, pulling out a vial of holy water next.

"Dude!" Lance ran over and snatched it from him, "this one is not water resistant, come one, please just open it." Lance pleas.

Dean glanced at Lance suspiciously. "And how the hell would you know that? You bought this, didn't you?"

"Yeah, _THIS ONE_ is from me, now would you please just open in and accept we love you?" Lance picks it up and shoves it in his arms.

Dean just stares at him in confusion for a second. "But… but why would you… I mean… it's not like…" He's really not sure how to put what he's trying to say into words, and he's not sure if he should. Lance did tell him to stop saying stuff like this, but he really just doesn't understand why anyone would bother. Other than Sammy, but Sammy had always been different. Finally, he just carefully pulls the present out to find a pair of fluffy piggy slippers.

"Do you like it?" Lance asks, beams of sunshine emanating from his face. His smile is so big he just might burst.

"It's… they're…" Holy shit, somebody actually got him a present. "Yeah, I love them." He hugs them against his chest, remembering how he used to get Sammy to eat stuff he didn't like by having him show him how the piggies eat.

Lance took that as a complete and utter victory. His smile got bigger and he held in the screams of joy as he closed the door. "I'm glad." he said and walked back down the hall to check on Keith who was taking a nap.

As soon as he's sure nobody's paying attention, Dean sits down, slips off his boots, and puts on the slippers, smiling like… well, like a kid on Christmas. Nobody but Sammy had ever done anything like this for him, since Cas didn't really know much about Christmas, and he really didn't know what to make of how he was feeling. It'd been such a long time, but maybe, just maybe, he felt a little… happy.

"Hey Keith." Lance says rubbing his shoulder to wake him up. "Your two hour nap is over, you need to do some real stuff now, maybe we can go for a walk?" Lance says. Keith rolls over and looks at him.

"What?" he asks in a husky voice. Lance smiles.

"A walk, you know around the block for fresh air." Lance says like it was obvious.

"Why?" he asks, Lance's smile wavers. "I was asleep and you woke me up, why would I want to go outside, when it's warm right here under the covers." Keith says,

"Welp, looks like your feeling better." Lance stands up, a little disappointed, but also glad he was better. He kind of wished he had stayed in the little kid faze a little longer, but he was still gonna make Keith get up and maybe take a walk. "Now get up, you've been a couch potato for to long, time to do something productive." Lance tugs on Keiths arm.

When they get to the doorway, they find Dean patting the piggy slippers on the head like they're puppies and saying, "I'll name you Bobby, and you Sammy." When he sees Lance and Keith, he flushes bright red, wrapping his arms around his knees and looking down quickly. That was so damn childish. What the hell was he thinking? His dad would've burned the slippers the minute he saw them. Better safe than sorry, after all.

"I love it." Lance declared with a smile. "Has anyone seen Cas? He like disappeared after we made cookies." Lance looks around a bit.

"We made cookies?" Keith says. Lance spins to look at him, and just like Lance thought, he doesn't remember anything, maybe that was a good thing, but Lance can't hide his frown as much as he wanted to.

"Yeah, we made Christmas cookies. All of us."

"Don't sweat it." Dean says, still blushing, but trying to act normal. "Some memory loss is totally normal. You're lucky it wasn't something random and permanent. I can't remember anything from when I was six 'cause I hit my head so hard." He turns to Lance. "And I think Cas is out on the back porch with his angel cookies, hoping his family will notice and forgive him." Man, does he feel bad for that baby in a trench coat.

"Oh, I'm just gonna let him be for now." Lance decides. "Keith do you want to taste a cookie we made?" Lance asks trying a smile.

"Uh…" Keith's eyes widen slightly and he looks over Lance's shoulder to Dean for help, '_we made cookies… together?' _he says with his eyes.

Dean nods and mouths 'damn well adorable'. Keith looks back to Lance a light blush across the bridge of his nose. "I guess." Keith shrugs. Lance smiles and tugs Keith into the kitchen.

"Dean you can come too." Lance says as they enter the kitchen.

For a second, Dean's shocked. Then he shakes his head and stands up. He really needs to remember that things aren't how they used to be. There are people other than Sammy who want him around now. He follows them into the kitchen and stands by his cookies, keeping a careful watch on Sammy's. Nothing and nobody was touching that cookie.

"You were all about the reindeer cookie cutter." Lance says with a smirk handing him a poorly decorated reindeer cookie. Keith looks down at it, then back up at lance.

"We…" Keith pauses not sure how to say this. "And we made this… together?" Keith asks a bit skeptical, not knowing if they were trying to pull a prank on him. Lance blushes.

"I mean, we uh, we made the dough together, but we all frosted the cookies, you frosted that one by yourself, almost, I mean I had to take the frosting away for a second, cause you were dumping it out… and now I'm rambling." Lance turns and looks for a cookie he made while muttering to himself.

"Yeah, you were _really_ into the frosting." Dean says, smirking. "It was… entertaining." Keith looks at him not knowing what he's talking about and Lance drops a cookie on the floor.

"Shit." he bends over to pick it up. "Damn you Dean." he mutters just loud enough for them to hear.

"Wait, what happened?" Keith asks still confused, the look on his face priceless, looking between the blue eyed boy and the green eyed boy.

Dean had gone a little pale. "I've already been damned, Lance. It's not fun." He turned to Keith. "Nothing happened. You were just a little over enthusiastic." He gave Lance another look full of ice. Stupid overly happy son of a bitch.

Keith could tell they weren't telling him something. "No seriously, what did I do. Did I say something?" he asks. "Did I make a joke about the white frosting looking like- well, you know." Keith asks not wanting to further embarrass himself, he looks to lance for an answer and Lance just goes back to softly pressing some sprinkles into the frosting on the cookie he was holding.

Keith looks at Dean, and Dean snaps, "Don't look at me, I'm too busy being damned again." He turned to go, but in the process, he accidentally bumped Sammy's cookie, and it fell off the counter onto the floor. And broke in half.

For a second, he just stares at it. Then, embarrassed by the tears that made an escape before he could stop them, he picks up the pieces and runs out of the room.

"Lance, what the hell did I do?" Keith almost yells at him, now he was desperate for an answer, he couldn't take this any more, but Lance was now worried about Dean, he grabbed a frosting bag and ran to deans room softly knocking on his door, Keith had followed right behind him.

"Dean, buddie, we can fix it, it'll just take a little bit of frosting, it's the super glue of the food world, trust me, Hunk made that very clear when I didn't believe him and he stuck me to the ceiling with it." Lance says through the door.

Dean doesn't say anything in response, but they can hear him crying through the door, so they carefully open it and go in. He's sitting on the floor by the bed, the two halves of the cookie in his hands, rocking backwards and forwards slightly. Lance knelt down in front of him and places and hand on his. Keith walked over and sat next to them.

Lance carefully and slowly reached for half the cookie to apply the frosting to the broken edge looking into Dean's eyes for approval before touching it.

Dean holds the halves out to Lance. "I broke it." he sniffles. "I made it for him, so he could be here, and I broke it." He starts crying harder. "I just want my brother back."

"I'm sorry." Lance whispers. "I can't bring him back, but I can help fix the cookie." Lance frosts it and sticks it back together, he was crafty when it came to cookies and cooking, like his father was. The cookie looked like it hadn't even been broken. "I'm sorry," Lance repeated himself. "I know exactly how you feel." Lance said looking into his eyes. He did, Cas knew the story, Keith, kind of knew the story, but Dean had never heard it. "I lost my family, when I could have spent their lives with them, but I left to be part of Voltron instead, and now their gone, and I didn't get to say goodbye." Lance tries to sum it up.

"You sound like Sammy." Dean whispers. "He left to go to Stanford. Dad was so angry. He said it was all my fault, that it was my job to keep the family together, that I should've tried harder…" Dean looks down. "I should've tried harder, but they were always fighting, and I didn't know what to do. I just wanted to be a family."

"I know nothing can replace your brother, but we are here. Cas is… somewhere… and we want to be… well, we want to be like your family, or as close as it can get. We made cookies, we decorated a tree, tomorrow is Christmas, let's have a good time ok buddie?" Lance sets the frosting on the floor to rest a hand on Dean's knee like he had earlier that day.

"In the kitchen, when you said damn you…" Dean stares at him for a second. "I'm sorry for freaking out. Just… if it were up to me, hell is exactly where I'd be, 'cause then Sammy would still be here. I don't care what they do to me. And Dad used to say that a lot, and… but that's not important. It's no excuse. I've got no right to get upset like that. I'm sorry."

"Dean," Keith cuts in, "you had every right to be upset, you could have been worse, you could have, you know, tried to punch him." Keith smirks. "And then broke a coffee table, but you didn't, you made it clear you didn't appreciate his comment, and now we know to try not to say that." Keith says

"Yeah." Lance says. "I will try harder next time, I can tell you've been trying hard on that thing we talked about."

Dean rubbed his eyes with his fists, looking for all the world like a four year old. "But dad said good soldiers don't…" he trailed off. _Shit, Dean, stop it_. He told himself. _Nobody wants to hear it. It's Christmas, they want to have a good time. They don't want to hear this from you. Nobody wants to hear this from you. Besides, do you really want to share that? The thing that hurts you most of all? No. No you don't._

Don't kill me, this was the best place to cut it off, I promise! but if you wanna know what happened next, let us know, the more comments we get, the faster the next chapter will come out! lot's of love! -Sam 


	20. The Bet

Dean rubbed his eyes with his fists, looking for all the world like a four year old. "But dad said good soldiers don't…" he trailed off. _Shit, Dean, stop it_. He told himself. _Nobody wants to hear it. It's Christmas, they want to have a good time. They don't want to hear this from you. Nobody wants to hear this from you. Besides, do you really want to share that? The thing that hurts you most of all? No. No you don't._

"It doesn't matter what your dad said." Keith cuts in. Lance doesn't know as much about Dean's dad as Keith does. "Your dad was an asshole that shouldn't have been in charge of you, he's gone and that is for the best. It matters what you think now, so make what you think, matter."

Dean shakes his head. "He wasn't an asshole all the time. He died for me. And he was right, he was always right…" Dean put his hands on either side of his head, like he's trying to hold it together. "It wasn't like that, it wasn't ever like that… he didn't do anything wrong… it wasn't his fault… he was upset, so he acted like that… I needed to learn discipline… good soldiers don't get upset… good soldiers just do what they're told… and keep their mouths shut…"

"Dean." Keith grips his shoulder tightly, bringing him back to the room, the floor, the present. "Stop. that's not right, you weren't a solder. You shouldn't have been put through any of the things you went through, and neither should have Sammy. Neither of you deserved that. Now look at me." Keith waits for Dean to meet his eyes. "His good doesn't way out the bad, not one bit, there might be small moments you remember, but more than half of his life was spent abusing you, mentally, and physically." Lance looks at the two of them, he can feel the tension in the air and adds.

"It's ok, to cry."

Dean shakes his head again. "No, no it's not. Crying makes you weak, and soldiers are strong." he glances back at Keith. "And nothing happened to Sammy, not really. I made sure nothing happened. I protected him, I raised him, I fed him, I stole for him, and I every time Dad would have gotten him in trouble, I said it was my fault to keep him safe. Sammy was fine because of me. And if…" he pauses, obviously on the bring of revealing something he's kept hidden for a long time. "And if… if…" He shakes his head again. "No, Dad said I couldn't tell. He said I couldn't tell."

"Re-program, dean." Lance says. "Dad's gone. You can talk, we'll listen. It's ok to cry. It is absolutely fine to cry."

Dean just sits there trembling for a second, then whispers, "And if Dad's bad, then I'm worst of all, 'cause I killed someone. And they hadn't done anything wrong, not really, but… I put a bullet in their brain." He looks between his friends, begging them with his shattered green eyes to understand. "I didn't… I didn't want to. But… but Dad had them tied up to a chair, and he handed me a gun, and he said I should… but I didn't want to… and… but… I killed them…" He starts crying so hard he can't really form coherent sentences, but he tries anyway. "Didn't want… nine years old… didn't…"

His friends wrapped him in a hug. "Dean, that's not your fault, you were quiznacking nine years old man." Lance says during the hug.

"It's not your fault." Keith agrees. "We know that, and it doesn't change the way we think or care about you."

"It was my fault, though." Dean puts his head down on Lance's shoulder. "Dad said it was. The guy didn't do anything, Dad said he was testing me, and I failed. I failed _again_. Just like always. And he wanted me to obey always, but that one time… that… I… shit, I deserve to go to hell."

Lance and Keith just hug him tighter, they let him cry, it's ok to cry. The moment seems to last forever, they just sit there on the floor of Deans bed room, hugging, a bag of frosting and a star shaped cookie on the floor next to them.

"Ok, so seriously, what did I do or say?" Keith changes the subject once the crying has settled down, and Lance and dean start laughing slightly, but Lance blushes more then he laughs.

"You tell him if you want to, man." Dean says. "As long as he doesn't remember Jamie and David, then I really don't care what else he knows." His laughing sounds a little hysterical, like laughing always does after you've been crying, but he looks marginally happier.

Lance looks at Keith who is expecting a story of what happened, but Lance blushes and turns away. Keith looks to Dean and mouths '_what the quiznack did I fucking say?'_ to him.

Dean grins wider and mimes licking something off his hand, then practically falls over, he's laughing so hard. Keith being who he is, doesn't get it at all. Not. at. All. he just looks at Dean like he's crazy, then looks at his hands. _Do I have something on my hands?_ He thinks. Lance didn't see Dean try to tell Keith what happened so lucky for Dean, Lance won't be glaring at him anytime soon.

Dean finally gets up off the floor, picking up the repaired cookie. "I'm gonna go put this back. And check on Cas. He's been outside for a while." he says.

"Good idea, we don't need another case of hypothermia." Lance says standing up as well. Keith stands up and looks at lance.

"Another?" he asks. "What the hell happened while I was out?" he runs a hand through his hair.

"Well…" Lance trails off. "Dean kind of, you see, he was getting a cold, and he uh, spent a little to much time outside, and he got hypothermia, but he's good now, I made sure of it." Lance assured him.

Dean shakes his head. "I told you, Dad said hypothermia isn't real. He told Sammy so after I spent the night outside, and Sammy said he thought I might die and showed Dad his health textbook. He said it's not real. So stop making shit up." Lance holds his hands up in defense, letting Dean win this one.

"Alright, alright." he says as they exit the room. Lance darts back in and picks up the frosting bag and then goes to put it in the kitchen.

"There, see?" Dean says triumphantly. "It wasn't all wrong." He goes over to the back door and pulls it open. "Cas, buddy, come inside. If they're not listening, then it's not worth bothering. We're right here."

A second later, Cas walks in, holding his cookies and looking dejected. "They didn't care." he whispers. "I thought they'd appreciate it, but they didn't care." He sets the cookies on the counter. "Gabriel used to care. We made stuff together all the time. Like baby elephants."

"Awe." Lance puts his hands over his heart. "I love baby elephants." he coos with a cute face. Keith puts a hand to the side of his face to "hide" the fact he asks Cas a question.

"Do you know what I did while we were making cookies? I don't remember anything."

Cas nods, and while Dean and Lance are busy thinking about baby elephants, he whispers, "You acted like a little kid, Dean told you a story about something that actually happened but changed it, Lance got frosting on his hands, then you licked it all off, and Dean made a dirty joke." Keith's eyes go wide, he turns to Lance and Lance sees the look on his face.

Lance turns on his heel and makes a beeline for his room, Keith not far behind, Cas following after, Dean wondering what's happening. Lance goes into the room and turn to close the door, but Keith is already there.

"Lance-" Keith tries to say at the same time as Lance says "Keith-" but they both blush and stop talking.

"Hey guys." Cas says, they look over to him and he points above their heads. Hanging from the door frame is a small bundle of mistletoe.

Dean shakes his head. "Dude, kudos on the placement. I didn't think you'd come up with something that good." Cas smiles proud of himself while Keith and Lance look at them in disbelief.

"I can't believe you two." Lance says crossing his arms. "You guys planed this didn't you." Lance says, he's not stern, or angry, it's like a sarcastic angry. "I am appalled." Lance places a hand on his chest mocking a soap opera. And walks past everyone into the family room, avoiding the obvious kiss Cas was hoping for.

Dean grins and holds his hand out to Cas. Cas grudgingly reaches into his pocket and pulls out a ten dollar bill, slapping it onto Dean's palm. Dean smiles. "Sweet! This is more money than I've had at one time in years!" Keith's mouth hangs open.

"You bet, on weather or not we would kiss?" Keith asks, trying his best to mock Lance, but he kind of fails, he's a bad actor. "I'm appalled."

Dean nods happily. "You guys said I had to stop stealing, and since the only two ways I've ever made money are betting and stealing, I had to do something. Guy's gotta earn a living."

"That is not what we meant and you know it." Lance calls from the family room. "Now come in here all of you, we are going to watch a Christmas special." Lance announces.

enjoy! I can't wait to see what you think of this one! Dean and I have so much fun writing this stuff together, and we love all the comments you give us! let us know what you loved and what you hated about this chapter! lots of love! -Sam 


	21. Christmas Movies

"That is not what we meant and you know it." Lance calls from the family room. "Now come in here all of you, we are going to watch a Christmas special." Lance announces.

"Hey, it's not like I hustled anyone." Dean says as they all come to sit down in the living room. "It was completely honest this time. I really did try." He looks up at Lance a little worriedly, wondering if he really did do something wrong, and if so, how he could fix it.

"Alright, it's better than nothing." Lance smirks rolling his eyes. "Ok, so are we watching 'Holiday Inn', or 'A Christmas Story'?" Lance holds up the two DVD cases.

"A Christmas Story!" Dean shouts happily. "I got a gun just like that one. Except it was real. And I shot a werewolves eyes out, not my own. But otherwise, it was the same! Or, y'know, sorta. I love that movie!"

"I don't know, 'Holiday Inn', is pretty great." Lance waves the case around. "So far it's one to one, come on guys, pick one." Lance looks between cas and Keith.

"I've never even heard of that one." Dean mumbles, while Cas looks at the cases in interest.

"Why's it called Holiday Inn?" Cas asks. "Is it only open on holidays?"

"Well, it's, uh, it's an inn that's open always, but on holidays they do fun stuff like put on musical numbers for the people that are staying there." Lance explains. "But, the story is about this girl and this guy, and- you know what, you'll have to watch it to find out." Lance says. "Keith." he looks to Keith, his smile covering up everything inside. "What do you want to watch?"

Keith looks up at him, '_I want to watch you.' _he thinks. But honestly, he hasn't seen either of these movies, how was he supposed to choose one? "Uh, I don't care." Keith shrugs. Lance gives him a pouty face, begging him to just make a choice. "Uh, whichever one you want to watch I guess." Keith says softer than the last time.

"Ok! Cas, was that a vote for 'Holiday Inn' or 'A Christmas Story'?" Lance turns to Cas.

Cas tilts his head to the side, studying both movies. "A Christmas Story sounds violent, if it's got guns. Holiday Inn, I suppose."

Dean is too busy making suggestive faces at Keith to tease him to care very much. Lance smiles and puts in Holiday Inn, completely oblivious to the conversations that was being silently passed between the two emo kids.

'_What?'_ Keith asks with his face

'_Whichever one you want to watch, I guess'_ Dean mouths, putting a hand on his chest and making moony eyes.

'_I didn't say that… I didn't say it like that.' _ Keith rolls his eyes.

'_Might as well have.'_ Dean puts the back of his hand on his forehead, like he was pretending to faint. '_I don't care what's on TV, as long as I can stare at you for hours.'_

'_I'm not like that.' _Keith pouts

'_Oh, Lance, the way you focus on the screen, you have no idea what it does to me.'_ Dean tries his hardest not to laugh, but damn, it's difficult.

'_I don't say stuff like that.' _Keith mouths, but while he's looking at Dean he doesn't notice Lance scooting back up against the couch right between his legs. When he does he looks down at Lance's head and turns red. He looks to see why he's on the floor and, yeah, they only had one couch, and it was taken up, shit, shit, shit. He looks to Dean '_what do I do?'_ he pleads as the movie starts.

Dean grins and slides down onto the floor. "Does anyone else wanna sit on the couch? I like the floor better anyhow." He and the floor have spent a lot of time together, after all. Keith scowls down at Dean, _that's not what I meant_. He thinks.

Lance knew he was talking to him so he shrugged, then shook his head. "Nah, the floor is cool, I might go onto the couch later though."

Dean shrugs at Keith. 'I tried.' he mouths.

Cas glances between them all, vaguely confused, then it comes to him exactly what's going on, and he smiles, shaking his head. Humans made things so much more complicated than they needed to be.

Throughout the whole movie Keith was distracted, he had no idea what was going on at any given moment, the movie was pretty much in black and white anyway. A few times Keith would move his hand and it would hover over Lance's head. He wanted to feel how soft his hair was, but he always backed out a few seconds later. When the movie reached what Lance dubbed the intermission, he got up to get snacks for everyone.

As soon as Lance was out of sight, Dean finally bursts out laughing. "You could've fried an egg on your face!" he gasps.

"What?" Keith says, his face only growing more red, he reaches up and lightly touches his face, either Dean was right, or his hands were unearthly cold. "Shut up." Keith grumbled, shrinking back into the coach.

"Seriously, I've seen stop signs with less color." Dean says. "I bet if I painted the word stop on your forehead and you stood on a street corner, people would literally stop." Keith covered his face with his fingers failing to cover the bright color spreading across his face, down his neck and around his ears.

"Alright, who's ready for some yummy- Keith, are you ok?" Lance cut himself off once he entered the room, seeing the state his friends were in.

Dean hid his face in his knees, coughing now from laughing so hard, but damn it, it was just so funny. Lance looked between them clueless. He shrugged it off and went to sit down next to Keith placing the snacks on the floor, which were, cookies, candy, eggnog and a stack of small paper cups.

Dean picks up the eggnog, curious. "Is this the kind with alcohol in it?" He'd recently found out there was a kind without it. The alcoholic one was the only one they'd ever had around. Lance shakes his head.

"I'm saving that one for tomorrow." Lance smirks, it's an evil look on Lance's face, and Keith can't help but fear it slightly.

Dean pours himself a cup, then simply pulls a flask out of his pocket and upends the contents into the cup as well.

"Dean, I think you might have a drinking problem." Cas says.

"We've had this conversation before, man." Dean says. "Yeah, I probably do. No, I don't care."

Cas folds his arms. "Ass-butt." he mumbles. Lance chuckles and shakes his head.

"Let's start the movie up again." he says reaching for the remote he left on the floor between Keith's feet. Keith goes tense as he does so, when Lance sits back up he re-adjusts his seating to where Keith can't help but notice, their legs are touching.

Dean just hides his face again and tries to laugh/cough quietly. When the movie starts again Lance notices Keith tapping his fingers on his leg anxiously. He looks to Keith's face to see whats wrong, his face is slightly red and he's biting his lip. Maybe he wasn't all the way better.

"You ok Keith?" Lance leans over to whisper as to not interrupt the movie. Keith flinches when he does so but tries to play it off.

"Yep, yeah, I'm… I'm totally fine, I feel great, this is an awesome movie. He's my favorite character." Keith mumbles.

"He's the bad one, have you been watching?" Lance cocks an eyebrow at his dark haired friend.

"Yeah, I like the bad guys." Keith says defensively, he had not been paying attention, and didn't know anything about his 'favorite character'.

"Ok, do you want a cookie or something?" Lance asks since he's already leaning over to talk to him.

Dean looks over and grins. "You should say yes, Keith. No matter what time of day it is, everyone deserves a cookie."

"Uh, y-yes. Yeah sure. Thanks Lance." Keith says, he thought Dean was trying to make a joke about saying yes… but was glad it didn't go in that direction.

Dean grabs a cookie of his own. Chocolate chip. "Man, I love these things. I used to steal em' for Sammy and me all the time." He took a bite. "Got kicked out of a couple stores, but it was totally worth it."

"Here you go." Lance hands one to Keith without leaning back over to whisper. He looks to Cas. "You want one?"

Cas nods. "Sure." Then he grins in a rather self satisfied way. "And to think Michael said cookies wouldn't catch on."

"He said what now?" Keith leans forward to look around Lance. "That is absolutely ridiculous."

Cas shrugs. "He said a lot of ridiculous things. I think he just didn't like anything I was making, since he hates fun and cute and happiness and all those things. He's very serious."

"Well, let it be known, cookies caught on, and we are very happy you created them." Lance says throwing an arm around his shoulders.

Cas smiles. "I told him somebody would appreciate me." Lance, Keith and Dean all nod and turn their attention back to the movie, where they were running around trying to put on their Christmas special for the residents.

"That's really nice of them." Dean says. "Bothering to do something nice for everybody like that, even though it's rough for them." He takes another drink of his eggnog/tequila concoction.

"Dean, I don't want you to be hung over on Christmas morning, be careful." Lance warns. Keith looks at Lance, his face serious, Keith smiles with an idea. Keith leans forward and whispers in Dean's ear.

"Do you have anything left in that flask of yours?" he asks.


	22. The VERY Red Paladin

"Do you have anything left in that flask of yours?" he asks.

Dean passes the flask, which is still half full, to Keith without question, then turns to Lance. "It takes a lot more than this to get me hungover, man. I promise. You'd have to put alcohol in an IV and pump it into me if you wanted to do that." Lance rolls his eyes and when Keith is sure Lance will see, he takes a large swig from the flask, Lance almost shrieks.

"Keith! Your still recovering, you can't drink yet!" Lance takes it from him and holds it away, Keith furrows his brow.

"I'm an adult Lance, and I wanna drink." Keith tries to take it back but Lance holds it further away from his short friend. "Curse my short limbs." Keith says right before he swiftly changes position on the couch reaches across Lances body and barely touches the flask. "Hand it over." Keith says, one arm wrapped around Lance's.

"No." Lance moves into the seat Keith used to be and holds it the other way. "I won't allow it." Keith swivels around, ignoring the music to a white Christmas starting and reaches for the flask. neither of them fully realizing the position they have put themselves in. Keith straddling his hips and upper body pressed up against Lance's as he reaches for the flask being held out of reach.

"Son of a bitch, Keith, at least buy him dinner first." Dean says. The two boys freeze. Lance looks down and turns red, he shoves the flask into Keith's hand and they falls into the coach at least five inches away, which is as much room as they can get without squishing Cas. Lance and Keith in each others seats.

"Sorry." they both mumble as the credits start to roll.

"The alcohol's not gonna hurt him, Lance." Dean says, trying to sound reassuring. "It's a cure-all, no matter how sick you might feel. At least, that's what Dad used to say. And he wasn't wrong. It works great."

"I gave it back." Lance says pointing to the flask in Keith's hands as he takes another sip. Keith licks his lips.

"This is good, Lance hasn't let me drink in so long." Keith smirks at lance. "It's been like five years." he says looking back to Dean.

"I still don't want anyone hungover in the morning." Lance says and Keith hands it over to Dean.

"He hasn't let you drink?" Dean looks like he can imagine few higher crimes. "You're an adult! I've been drinking since I was seven years old." He turns to Lance. "Dude, that's not normal. He's over twenty-one. It's completely legal."

"I know, but we made a pact, we were both not gonna drink for a whole year and we just got out of the habit, it's not like I wouldn't let him, it just never came up, and I bought some of that eggnog for tomorrow, it was supposed to be the first drop we've both had since then." Lance explains. Keith suddenly feels kind of bad. So he changes the subject.

"How about we leave some cookies out for Santa, eat some dinner, and go to bed so we can wake up at five in the morning and open presents like Lance makes me do every year."

"Leave cookies out for Santa?" Dean asks. "I thought they only did that in movies." Lance promptly face palms and shakes his head.

"Nope, it's what lots of people do, at least my family always did it, it was my favorite part of Christmas." Lance tries to explain.

"Lance, you said five different things were your favorite." Keith points out. Lance smiles.

"Well maybe they all are, mullet."

Dean shakes his head. "You could always cut it while he's asleep if you want. I mean, you share a room." He pulls out a pocket knife and holds it out. "This one's real sharp, should work fine. Might not even wake him up."

Lance's eyes widen at the knife. He looks to Keith then Cas, then Dean then the knife again.

"If you even try, I will cut you." Keith says easily, "and then shave you bald." Keith adds glancing at Lance.

"Well that settles it." Lance states. "I'm not going to be cutting Keith's hair in his sleep anytime soon." Lance says, even though he wasn't going to any way, he kind of like his mullet, but he would never say so out loud.

Dean shrugs and puts the knife away. "Suit yourself." Lance laughs nervously and glances back over to Keith.

"Alright, let's get a plate of cookies and a glass of milk for Santa." Lance stands up and leads the way to the kitchen, picking up the snacks he brought in with him.

Dean doesn't follow. Instead he pulls out some salt and carefully places a line across the fireplace. Cas helps them sort some cookies on the plate and they set it next to the tree with a glass of milk.

"And now, we eat some food, and go to bed, what do you guys want for dinner?" Lance asks placing his hands on his hips.

"I can make pancakes." Dean suggests, almost looking embarrassed.

"I love pancakes!" Lance claps, Keith smiles and nods in agreement. "I can cook up some bacon to go with it and everything!"

Dean nods happily. "If bacon's what kills you, you still win." he says, then heads over to the stove. He pauses by Lance on his way and says quietly so only he can hear, "About the drinking thing… I'm sorry I screwed it up. I didn't know." Then he just starts grabbing stuff for pancakes like he hadn't said a word.

"It's fine." Lance mutters opening the fridge to get the bacon as Keith and Cas sit at the table. As the two of them get cooking Keith can't help but watch Lance move about the kitchen.

"Can you put gummy bears on mine?" Cas asks. "Not in it, that'd be gross, but on it? And whipped cream."

Dean smiles, looking for all the world like a mother with a sugar addicted kid. "Yeah, sure."

"Do we even have gummy bears?" Keith asks. Lance perks up.

"Oh yeah, there's some in my closet, hold on I'll go get them." Lance runs to his room to get them.

"Of course there's some in his closet." Dean shakes his head. "He's probably got the missing Death Star plans in his closet."

"No." Keith shakes his head. "He keeps those in his nightstand drawer." Keith smirks.

Dean grins too. People really shouldn't give him openings like this. "You would know. Are his underwear in there too?"

"W-what?" Keith stutters turning red. "Why would you-, I just- I mean- it's not like I- ugh never mind." Keith folds his arms on the table and plops his head down into them mumbling something about Lance, and his nightstands drawer.

Dean puts a plate with pancakes down in front of him. "You know you never denied it, right?" Keith lifts his head to take a pancake in his mouth and chew on it without using his hands, placing his chin on his arms.

"What is going on out here." Lance walks in holding a bag of gummy bears. He looks at Keith, then Dean, then Cas, but no one gives him an explanation. "What exploded?"

"Nothing recently," Dean hands him a pancake and takes the bag of gummy bears, "but that can be arranged if you want."

Cas looks up. "No. Dean, I swear, if you blow up one more thing just because somebody gave you the idea, I'll lock you in your room and I won't let you out for three weeks."

Dean just shakes his head and sits down at the table too. "That threat doesn't scare me, Cas. It's already been done, and I'm assuming that you would feed me regular meals, so it'll be even better than last time. Now shut up and eat your food." He dumps half the bag of gummy bears on top of Cas's pancakes. Lance grabs the whipped cream from the cupboard and puts a large swirl on top of the gummy bears.

"Eat up everyone! The sooner we go to sleep the sooner Santa can come." Lance sings as he grabs the butter and syrup from the fridge.

"Santa is scary." Dean says simply. "Have you ever had an actual conversation with one of those guys in suits on street corners? They're absolute pervs. All of them. One of them tried to drug Sammy and me and put us in his van, but I shot him. And even if Santa was real, you realize he would see _everything_? How can you be comfortable taking a shower?" Lance slaps a large piece of butter down onto Deans pancakes.

"Well, they aren't the real Santa anyway, and you know what, I agree with the whole he sees everything thing, he is a stalker and should be arrested." Lance sits down and applies butter and syrup to his pancakes.

"Lance, are you ok?" Keith asks with a slight smirk. "Or are you even Lance? Who are you and what have you done with my friend." Keith stands and points a fork at him.

"I'm just saying." Lance shrugs taking Keith's plate and putting his half eaten pancake back on it so he could prepare it for consumption. "Now I'm gonna check on the bacon." Lance hands the plate back to Keith and stands.

"Christo." Dean says experimentally, looking for the tell-tale flinch that means demonic possession, since that's usually why anybody acts different, but there was nothing, so he turns to Keith and shrugs. "I guess he's all clear."

Keith looks between Lance, Dean and his food for a moment then sits down, only to look back at Lance as he opens the oven to pull out the bacon. When Dean catches his eye and wiggles his eyebrows Keith looks back to his food, red spreading across his face once more as he pokes his food with his fork.

"Do you want any more?" Dean asks. "'Cause I can make more." Sometimes, when he went into hardcore 'taking care of everyone' mode, it was hard to get him to quit.

"I'm good, but who wants bacon?" Lance brings over the plate full of bacon to the table.

"I always want bacon." Dean says simply.

Cas nods and says, "Sure, some."

Dean grins. "And you said it was going to kill me."

hey my friends, it's me Sam, I know I was gone for like... a year, but stuff happened, if anyone actually reads this crap, let me know what you think! love you all! -Sam


	23. Let Me Drown

Dean grins. "And you said it was going to kill me."

Cas looks back at him, his face entirely serious. "I really wouldn't be surprised." Lance laughs as he sits down and places some bacon on everyone's plates.

"Do you need more than that Dean or is that good?" Lance teases after only giving him one piece.

Dean gives him an adorable pouty face, just like a little kid. Lance feels his brain punch him in the face and he gives Dean three more pieces and starts to eat silently, the puppy faces always got to him.

Dean smiles in relief. "Sweet. For a second, I thought you were serious." Keith smirks.

"Are you kidding, Lance eats twice that much bacon without a second thought. And then regrets it a few hours later. He will give you as much as you want, he always does." Keith says. Not quit registering his use of words before it's to late.

"You would know all about that, wouldn't you?" Dean smirks and starts enthusiastically eating his bacon. Too easy. Keith just puts his face into his pancakes as he groans. Lance blushes and looks away from everyone, when he looks back he shoots to his feet.

"Keith, do you know how hard it is to get syrup out of long hair? It's really really hard." Lance goes over to him and lifts his head out of his plate to see his bangs coated entirely in syrup.

"No Lance, let me drown in syrup." Keith pulls his head free and shoves his face back into his food. And mumbles something loudly, but no one can understand.

"You should." Dean says to Lance. "Syrup is way more pleasant to drown in than chloroform or something." Man, had that been a sucky day. Lance gives him a look like, 'your just gonna let him do this?' as he points to him.

"Not helping." Lance says the pink in his tan checks fading.

Dean nods. "He'll come out when he's ready. If he's anything like Sammy, he'll bite you if you try to make him stop sulking any sooner than he wants to."

"Fine, but I'm not helping get that out of your hair, that's on you." Lance says walking back to his seat to finish eating. The way Lance and Keith could move on from something like that was nothing else. You'd think it might help them realise their into each other, but noooooooooo.

"Sure, I can get the syrup out of his hair." Dean says easily. "It's way easier to do that than get blood out of hair." Lance rolls his eyes and finishes off his food. He stands with his empty plate.

"You done Cas, Dean?" Lance points to their plates.

Cas nods, pushing his empty plate away from him. Dean glances down at the half a pancake he still has left, but always wanting, well almost needing, to please, he nods too and pushes it away.

"Are you sure you don't wanna finish that?" Lance asks almost reading Deans mind. "You can if you want, it's your choice, not mine." Lance takes his and Cas's plate to the sink leaving Deans on the table so he can make a second choice.

Very tentatively, like he expects somebody to snap at him, Dean reaches out and pulls the plate back towards him. He glances up at Lance, looking for approval. You'd think he expected to be hit, the way he was looking at him.

"You want more bacon too don't you?" Lance smirks at him, trying to lighten the mood that was hanging in the air.

"Is there enough?" Dean asks, the one question he's never been able to escape, no matter how hard he's tried. Lance looks to the plate of bacon, then to Keith.

"Well I don't think mister emo mullet is gonna eat any and Cas and I have finished, so the rest is yours." Lance slides the pate over to him.

Dean stares down at it like it's a priceless treasure, then gives Lance a genuine smile and starts eating. Lance grins and then looks to Cas.

"You ready for Christmas?" he asks in a slight singsong voice he always gets when he's excited.

"Do you want me to tell you what really happened on the first Christmas?" Cas asks. "'Cause everybody always gets it wrong." Lance blinks.

"Uh, sure sounds fun." Lance glances at Keith as he slowly peels his face off his pancake. "Keith go take a shower." Lance commands. Keith nods slowly and walks to his room to get his things for a shower. "Take it away Cas."

Cas smiles. "See, when Gabriel went to go tell Mary she was pregnant, she threw her gardening shovel at his head, but everyone wants to make her seem perfect, so nobody mentions it. And she threw a few flowerpots and stuff. It was a big mess. And when Joseph decided he wanted to leave Mary because he didn't know who she'd gotten pregnant with, Gabriel didn't send him a soothing dream or anything like everybody talks about. He threw him out of bed, called him a douchebag, and threatened to burn his eyes out if he didn't 'get his shit together'. And when they were halfway to Bethlehem, the donkey fell over and died, so Mary fell down a hill, which was also a mess, but I fixed the donkey, so it was okay after a while. And when the Innkeepers put Mary in the stable, Joseph only waited around long enough to help her have the baby before he went back to the Inn and got in a fistfight with the guy. And when Gabriel went to the shepherds, they threw their staffs at him, and the sheep tried to bite him. They weren't trembling with fear or any of that. And Gabriel didn't tell them not to be scared. He told them they weren't as scared as they should be, and to shut up, 'cause he had to tell them something important. And the wise men killed King Herod, 'cause I asked them to." he shrugs. "I think it's way more interesting."

Lance blinks a few times before responding. "Well I for one like your version 100% more then every other version I've ever heard." Lance claps his hands as he stands up. "Who wants to help me with the dishes?"

****Time skip brought to you by: salt lines by the fireplace.****

short chapter! i'm so evil, tee hee hee, gotta love it thought right? tell me, who is your favorite so far? -Sam


	24. The Night Before Christmas

****Time skip brought to you by: salt lines by the fireplace.****

"Pst. Lance." a voice from over by the door said. Lance sat up and looked around groggily. What in the name of all that is holy- "psssssssssst." Lance got up and walked over to the door rubbing his eyes on the way, he cracked the door open and looked out.

Dean was standing there in just his jeans, looking like he'd rolled out of bed, an old tattered book hugged to his chest. "Lance, it was a dream, right?" He honestly looked utterly terrified.

"What was a dream?" Lance asked confused stepping out of the room into the hall with him as to not wake up Keith.

Dean clutches the book tighter, like it's a lifeline. "Dad and Sammy and Mommy, and what they said, and what happened. It was a dream, right?" He watches Lance, waiting for an answer, with haunted, confused eyes.

"What did they say?" Lance asked calmly. He needed to know in order to tell Dean if it was a dream or not.

"That I screwed it all up again." Dean whispered. "That I never do anything right, and that I got Sammy killed 'cause I'm not strong enough, and that I let them all down, and they hate-" His breath hitched with a sob and he hugged the book closer. "And they hate me." he said so quietly it was barely audible.

"That was definitely a dream." Lance placed a hand on his friends shoulder. "What's this book?" Lance tapped the book with his other hand.

Dean glances down at it and almost looks startled, like he hadn't realized he was holding it. "It's… it's Dad's old journal. He put everything in here. Pictures… stuff about monsters… and other stuff."

"Oh." Lance muttered. "Why do you have it?" Lance asked softly and kindly looking into Dean's eyes.

"I… I'm not sure." he whispers. "I just… I always grab it when I'm upset. And remember that Dad used to be… different. That he would've protected me. Years ago."

"It's late Dean, do you want to try and get some more rest?" Lance asks. "Do you wanna sleep on the floor in my room with us?" Lance suggests, he would always want to sleep in his parents room when he had a bad dream.

Dean shakes his head quickly, almost panicked. "No, if I sleep it'll come back. It always comes back. I'm so sick of… I just wish it would go away." The journal accidentally slips from his numb hands and hits the floor, old photographs scattering. Dean stares at it for a second, horrified. "Dad's gonna kill me." he mutters, bending down, trying to gather up the pictures, but his hands are shaking too hard.

"Dean stop it, Dean stop." Lance bends down to his level. "You dad cant touch you, he's not here." Lance places a hand on his shoulder. "Leave it." he says softly yet sternly at the same time. "Come with me into the kitchen for a second."

"I can't just leave it here." Dean whispers. "This stuff is Mommy's and Sammy's too." He looks down at the one picture he's managed to keep a hold of, one of a woman with blonde hair and green eyes hugging a little boy who had the same blonde hair. The same green eyes. "It's theirs too…"

"I know dean, I know." Lance coos soothingly. "Come on, let's go into the kitchen." Lance pulls Dean up by the arm letting him hold onto the photo.

Dean looks at Lance fearfully. "I'm sorry, I woke you up, I'm so sorry. I… I didn't mean…" He glances down at Lance's hands like he's looking for something.

"It's ok, I was gonna get up anyway, now come on." Lance brings Dean into the kitchen and sits him down. Lance looks through a few cupboards and pulls out a small bottle of white pills. "Take this, it'll help with the dreams. I promise." Lance holds it out to him. "Do you want some water?"

Dean stares at the pills like they're poison. "You want me to shut up. Just like Dad always wanted me to shut up. He used to give me those all the time, said I woke up screaming to much, said he didn't wanna deal with it. Said that's ridiculous…"

"Dude, it's melatonin. I don't want you to shut up, I'm trying to help you, look I can take one too if you want." Lance tries. "It has nothing to do with your dad, it has to do with your well being."

"I don't even care about that. Why would you?" Dean looks up at him. "Why does it mean anything to you? You keep saying you care, but you never tell me why, and I'm not sure I believe you."

"I care because your my friend. Because you care about me. Because you care about Cas and Keith. I care about you because your awesome and talented, I care about you because your hurt, and because you don't care. And if you don't care someone has to. But I would care about you even if you did. I would still care about you even if you didn't care about me. I care about everyone, just like you do." Lance says setting the pill on the table forgetting about it. "I care about you because you're worthy of being cared for."

Dean's green eyes almost seemed to glow in the dark room as he searches Lance's face for any sign of a lie. A single tear slides down his face. "You really mean it." He says, shocked. "You actually mean it."

"Yes dean. I really really mean it." lance says looking back into his eyes. "I want you to be happy, and I'm doing my best to make that happen. Dean, how can I make you happy?"

Dean stares. Nobody ever really asked him what he wants, and he's really not sure what that even is anymore. So he just says the first thing that comes to mind. "I want a family, and I want to be safe." Lance bites his lip as he thinks.

"We can be your family Dean." Lance offers. "And we can keep each other safe." he says.

Dean nods slowly, his gaze still searching, obviously still expecting to be lied to. "Double promise?" He holds out his pinky finger. It's how he and Sammy used to promise. It's unbreakable to him. Lance smiles and links his pinky finger with Deans.

"I double promise." he says softly. "Now do you want to drink some water, take the pill, let me sing you a lullaby, tell you a story, tuck you in?" Lance smiles, his offers were genuine, and he would follow through with every single one of them if Dean wanted him to.

"Water's good. But I won't take the pill." Dean mutters, looking down. He just can't. All it does is remind him of suffocating blackness, nightmares he can't wake up from, death and blood and misery. "And…" he's almost embarrassed to ask, but he misses it so much. "And can you sing 'Hey Jude? By the Beatles?" It was his mom's favorite Beatles song, and she'd sung it to him every night before bed, telling him that angels were watching over him. It was the last thing he'd ever heard her say. Lance nodded. He got Dean a glass of water then walked him back to his room and stood in the doorway to sing.

"_Hey Jude, don't make it bad_

_Take a sad song and make it better_

_Remember to let her into your heart_

_Then you can start to make it better_

_Hey Jude, don't be afraid_

_You were made to go out and get her_

_The minute you let her under your skin_

_Then you begin to make it better_

_And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain_

_Don't carry the world upon your shoulders_

_For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool_

_By making his world a little colder_

_Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah"_

And then Dean was asleep. Since lance was awake he took this time to get all the gifts he stashed in the hall closet and the bathroom closet and put them all under the tree. He sorts them and makes it look like it always did when he was little. Lance nodded in satisfaction and walked down the hall to go back to bed. He stopped when he almost stepped on the journal Dean had dropped.

"What even is all of this?" Lance whispers to himself picking up a few of the pictures to look at them, what was oh so special about them but also so tearable.

The first picture was of four people. The woman and little boy from before were there, but there was also a man and a baby in this one. The man was holding the blonde haired boy, smiling, and the woman was holding the baby. Somebody had written across the bottom of the picture in pen. _Mary, John, Dean, and baby Sammy, July 4th, 1983._

The next picture was missing the woman. It was just Dean and the man, John, and Sammy, older now. It had obviously been years. Dean had a bruise right across his cheekbone and a completely inadequate band aid across a gash on his forehead, just above his eye. Sammy had a split lip, but he was smiling happily in Dean's arms. John looked cold and distant, very different from the man that had held his boy and smiled in the first picture.

Lance peaks into the journal curious about what entries there might be.

He finds one labeled _November 10th, 1983_.

_Dean still barely talks._ Whoever was writing, presumably John had said. _I don't know what to do with him. He's gotten so quiet since we lost Mary. The only person he talks to is Sammy. Sammy took his first steps today too. He was trying to get to Dean._

Lance flips through the pages again and finds another one, this one labeled, _May 15, 1996_.

_Dean screwed up big time. He let Sammy run away when he was supposed to be watching him. I got the kid back, but damn, if Dean had just paid better attention, none of this would've happened in the first place. I don't remember much about when he told me Sammy was gone, I was drunk at the time. But something's different. I found blood on one of his pairs of jeans, and he keeps looking at me differently. Like he thinks I'm going to beat him or something. I think I hurt him, but I can't remember. What the hell kind of a father am I? What would Mary think of me now?_

He flips to one final entry, not wanting to see more, but needing to.

_August 18th, 2002_

_Sammy left. I can't believe he left. Told us he'd been accepted to Stanford and walked out on our whole family. How could Dean let this happen? He was supposed to keep our family together, he was supposed to keep everything together. Why would he fail when it really counts? But don't worry, I punished him. I don't think he's moved since. I'd check on him, but sometimes you deserve it._

Lance didn't want to intrude on Deans private life more then he already had, he stacked up the photos and placed them inside the journal and put the small book on the kitchen counter before going to bed. He glanced at the clock on the oven that read exactly midnight.

****Time skip sponsored by: Christmas Morning at the McClain house****


	25. Happy Day

****Time skip sponsored by: Christmas Morning at the McClain house****

"Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeith!" Lance shouts in Keith's ear shaking him awake. "Keith wake up! It's Christmas." he sings. Keith pulls a pillow over the side of his head to drown out the sound.

"Lance can't you just let me sleep in one Christmas. Just once." Keith mumbles. Lance jumps out of bed and pulls on his ankle.

"Come on! I wanna see the tree, let's wake up Cas and Dean! Come on come on come on!" Lance pulls him off the bed with a thud.

"Can you just calm down?" Keith throws his pillow at Lance. "Maybe they want to sleep." Lance throws the pillow back.

"Then they better learn, because this is what happens on Christmas morning in the McClain house hold." Lance proclaims.

"Lance, this isn't your house." Keith says throwing the pillow at his face and anything else he can find on the floor with him.

"As long as I live here it is!" Lance says jumping on the bed to avoid Keith wrath. Keith stands up an evil gleam in his eye. "Ok Keith, let's think about this." Lance holds up his hands eyes suddenly widen with fear.

A scream echoes through the house and Dean jolts awake. Grabbing his gun from under his pillow, he slips out his door and over to Lance's and Keith's, ready to gank whatever got in their house. He stiff arms the door open and jumps inside. "Who's killing who and what still needs to die?"

"KEITH!" Lance screams scrambling under the bad and out the other side. Keith jumps over the bed and shoves the pillow in his face.

"Eat it Lance. That's what you get." Keith says aggressively

Dean slowly lowers the gun. "Should've known you were making each other scream." he grumbles. "It's like two star porn." He turns and walks back out. "Don't let me interrupt."

"No! Dean! Save me!" Lance tries to escape Keith's grasp and somehow stumbles out the door ahead of Dean.

"Come back here you scumbag, I wanted to sleep in." Keith shouts standing up and pointing after him

Dean shakes his head. "I really don't even know what to say right now, other than BACK THE HELL OFF EACH OTHER!" He folds his arms and glares. He really does strike an impressive figure, gun tucked into his waistband, still shirtless, making his muscles pretty obvious, the morning sunlight gleaming off his bare skin.

"Hey I didn't do nothing." Lance calls from the family room. Keith glares.

"Anything." he corrects. They can almost hear Lance roll his eyes. "Anyway, let's go see the tree since were up." Keith suggests.

Dean nods. "If you're done being a grammar Nazi, sure." He turns and shouts, "Cas! Get your lazy ass outta bed! They wanna give you presents and shit!"

Cas comes out the door with an adorable bed head and heads to the living room with Keith and Dean.

Lance, Cas, and Keith all group around the tree, looking at the pile of presents. Dean sits down on the couch a little removed and says, "Damn you guys are popular."

"This one's for you." Lance tosses one over to him as Keith and Cas both grab one that's addressed to them and start to peel the wrapping off of it. Lance grabs one for himself but watches out of the corner of his eye to see what Dean does.

For a second, Dean stares at the box. He's itching to pull out the salt and holy water, but he knows now is not the time. He's supposed to be trying to do better. And the fact that there's one there for him at all, well, that's gotta be a sign or something. He carefully peals the paper back and opens the box, pulling out a book, the title _Supernatural_ across the cover. For a second, he stares. Then just starts laughing. "Son of a bitch." he gasps.

"What?" Keith asks trying to look at the book he's holding. "What is it?" he asks again.

Dean slides the book out of sight. "No way in hell are any of you ever reading this. It's Chuck's book. He was… different, and he somehow knew about everything that was going on with Sammy and me, and he wrote it into a book. There's way to much about my thoughts in there, it's too personal, no reading. We stopped him from writing any more after I went to hell for a reason."

"Awe, ok." Keith falls back on his heels. "Hey this one's for you too." Keith picks one up and hands it to him. Cas, Keith, and Lance sit and watch him open it.

"Another one?" he asks. "Really?" He pulls the paper off and opens the box. Inside is a pie. With a knife through it. Apple pie. He looks up in surprise. "Thank you. I didn't think I was gonna get anything."

"You know, I'm just gonna start making a pile for you." Lance says stacking three gifts next to him. "Oh here's one for Keith." he tosses it to him and adds three more to Deans pile.

Keith opens it happily and pulls out a hippo plushie holding a knife, "sweet." he says. "I love it." he says setting it between his legs. "Where's one for Cas?" he asks, Lance pulls one out of the pile and hands it to Cas.

Cas opens the little box to find a badge shaped like a bee. _Best Guardian Angel Ever_ it proudly proclaims. He holds it up to the light, then smiles at Dean. "Thanks. I'm glad you think so." At least somebody did.

"Dean you open another one." Lance tosses him one.

Dean catches it, staring at the small pile. "There's seriously a whole damn pile? For me? I'm not worth that-" he pauses. Shit, he did it again. "I mean, um… nope, no way to save that one, just pretend I didn't say anything." He shakes the box experimentally. "It's not gonna jump out and eat my face, right?" Lance laughs.

"No, it's not, go on." he says as he add a few more to the 'Dean' pile he finds one addressed to him and waits for Dean to open his before he open his own.

He pulls out a black leather jacket with _Kansas_ stitched across the back.

"I thought you'd like it." Cas says. "Since you were born there. And you like the band. They wrote _Carry on Wayward Son_, right?"

Dean nods. "Son of a bitch, thanks." He puts the jacket on, somehow looking amazing shirtless in jeans and a leather jacket, while most people would've looked like a complete dork.

Lance then goes to open his, he slowly peels back the paper knowing how it will drive them all crazy. Keith gives him a look and Lance chuckles before ripping it off the rest of the way, he opens the box and pulls out a small lion plushie. "Oh my jolly ranchers this is the cutest thing I have ever held in my hands." Lance cradles the small lion to his chest. "Thank you Keith, thank you thank you thank you!"

"Ok, now this one is for Cas, from me." Keith says handing one to Cas.

Cas grins and pulls back the paper excitedly. He pulls out a giant bumble bee plushie and literally squeaks. He hugs it tight, crushing it against his chest. "It's name is Bartleby. That was the name of the first bumble bee." Lance lets out a cute awe placing his hands over his heart before he shoves a small thin squishy gift into Keith's arms.

"Open it." he almost shouts, Lance knew exactly what it was and was bouncing in his seat as Keith opened it. He lifts the fabric revealing a large T-shirt. Half of it Blue half of it red. On the front was printed, the bonding shirt. Keith looked at it for a long time. "I mean, I was gonna admit I remembered on Christmas, but it came up before then, I had ordered this a while ago, before we met Dean and Cas. and I've been waiting."

"You realize this is three times my size right?" Keith says letting it fall into his lap. Lance smiles even bigger and scoots over next to him taking the shirt and quickly putting it over both of their heads.

"That's cause it's for both of us!" Lance squeals excitedly. "I saw it on pinterest and just had to do it ya' know?" Keith looks at him with a blank face.

"No Lance I wouldn't know. You know why? Because I don't know what pinterest is."

"Maybe it's a porn site. Like MySpace." Dean says.

"Dean, that's not a porn site either." Cas says exasperatedly.

"But why else would it be called MySpace?" Dean argues.

"Don't ask me." Cas shrugs. Lance shrugs as well and Keith finally puts his arm thought his assigned arm hole.

"Ok, who's next, Dean?" Keith puts them back on track. Lance picks up a gift from his pile with his feet and tosses it to him rather professionally. He has had practice throwing things with his feet. Don't ask.

"You're like a monkey." Dean says, pulling the present open. Man, who knew Christmas morning could be happy? Just… happy?

He pulls out a vinyl copy of Pink Floyd's _Dark Side of the Moon_. He stares at it for five seconds before saying, "You've. Got. To. Be. Shitting. Me."

"Is that good or bad?" Lance asks slightly worried.

"What do you think?" Dean asks, still staring at the album. "You get me a vinyl copy of _Dark Side of the Moon_, and you need to ask whether that's good or bad? Where's your culture?"

"Well I mean I thought you would like it but I don't know, you could have something against it maybe, I mean how would I know?" Lance rambles slipping out of the shirt leaving it baggie around Keith's body. "Do you like it or not?"

"Like it? Like it? I damn well _love_ it. And Keith, for the record, you look like I used to when I was a teenager in that shirt. Except, y'know, mine were supposed to fit." He laughs shaking his head. "Man, this is a great present." Lance lets out a sigh of relief.

"Ok good. Hey, look this one's for me." Lance picks one up. "Here you open one at the same time that way you'll get through yours faster." Lance says tossing him one. Lance starts to open it, but when Dean realizes it's the one he put under the tree yesterday he stops opening his so he can watch lance. Lance pulls off the paper and lifts the blue lion hoodie out of his lap. "Oh my god." Lance mutters.

"That's the one he stood in the snow for two hours for." Cas says. "It wasn't in yet, and he wanted to wait."

"Cas, shut up." Dean hisses. He likes to do nice things for people, but he's not used to being acknowledged for it. It makes him uncomfortable."

"Oh my god thank you so much Dean! This is so cool!" Lance puts it on over his sleep shirt and hugs himself in it. "It's so cozy!"

Dean smiles. "Don't thank me, you deserve it." He's trying to say thank you for last night without saying it, and he's hoping Lance gets it. Lance grins a happy smile at him and continues to cuddle inside the hoodie.

"Ok Dean, your turn, finish unwrapping that one." Lance says

Dean pulls out a hunting knife and smiles again, but the smile's different this time. It's a little more wicked. "I know exactly what I'm gonna do with this."

"Welp, I'm scared who's next?" Keith says pulling both arms inside the big shirt he was still wearing but this time he also pulled his knees into it so only his head was poking out the top.

"How about you Cas, this one is from Dean." Lance hands one to Cas.

Cas smiles at Dean. "Thank you." He pulls it open and finds a little painting. It's of an angel alighting peacefully on top of a tree. And not just any angel. Him. He looks up at Dean, shocked. "Did you make this?"

Dean flushes and mumbles, "Yeah."

Cas holds it up to look at it more closely. It almost looks real, like the little angel might just fly off the page. "I didn't know you were an artist."

"I'm not." Dean mumbles. "It's not that good. I just thought you might like it."

"It's super cool Dean, really good." Keith says. Lance nods in agreement.

"Oh, Keith I have another one for you." Lance pulls out a gift for Keith and tries to hand it to him. But Keith no longer has arms. "Keith, you'll have to take your arms out to open it."

"Fine." he grumbles and pushes his arms out, he takes the gift and opens it, inside the box is a, "seriously, a princes hat?" Keith grumbles looking at the tall pointy pink fluffy hat. Out of the top was a two foot long piece of tulle.

"Read it." Lance says pointing to it. And sure enough on the front of the hat was 'EMO PRINCESS' in all caps and black letters.

"Wow, lance." Keith rolls his eyes. "Thanks."

"Your welcome." Lance smiles at him, even though he knows Keith was being sarcastic. As soon as Keith put his arms back into the shirt, Lance reached over and put it on his head. And Keith is to lazy to take it off, so it stays.

Dean tries not to laugh, but it isn't really working. "That is the best thing I've ever seen." he says.

"It's Lance's turn for a present." Cas says, trying to restore calm. He pulls a box out of the pocket of his ever-present trench coat and hands it to Lance.

"Wow thanks pal." Lance says before even opening it. Lance can sense the importance of the gift and he looks at it lovingly for a moment. He then starts to peel back the layer of paper. Underneath is the familiar packaging for a deck of cards. But this was different.

The usual diamonds and hearts and numbers aren't there. Instead there are angel wings and lions and knives and ghosts. And instead of kings and queens and jacks and jokers, there's Lance and Keith and Dean and Cas, and instead of Aces, there's an odd symbol that looks like someone took the first letters of each of their names and linked them together. Each card is painstakingly hand painted.

"Wow." Lance breaths as he looks through the card again and again. "This is so cool, like, I just, I don't even have words for this, it's incredible, thank you man." lance says with a grin plastered across his face. "I have one more thing for you too." Lance reaches behind him and grabs a box and hands it to him "here you go."

Cas opens the box and stares at these bee wings that you put on your back, like a Halloween costume. "That's… I don't even…" He pulls them out and puts them on. "I love them." His face is shining as he turns to Lance. "I've got wings again." lance's face splits open in an even bigger grin.

"If you smile any bigger, I swear your face is gonna fall in two." Keith says plainly and they all laugh. None of them could have asked for a better Christmas.

****Time skip brought to you by: real plot now****

* * *

well, plot after this chapter, the next one is the beginning of something tragic, get ready everybody, and bring those tissues. -Sam


	26. Get Your Guns

****Time skip brought to you by: real plot now****

Things had been a little Awkward between Dean and Lance since Dean had found his dad's journal on the counter and realized that Lance had read it, but he couldn't resist asking about new years eve.

"Why are we buying all this shit?" Dean asks, poking Lance's shoulder. "I thought New Years Eve parties were just drinking until you passed out."

Lance shakes his head with a sigh. "You see Dean, new years eve differs from family to family and such, my family didn't drink, well at least as far as I know, but we basically eat a bunch of junk and got sick the next day after staying up till midnight, making a bunch of bad decisions and blow up a few firecrackers." Lance adds two platters of shrimp to their cart as they walk down the aisle.

"I think we blew up a werewolves face once." Dean looks down at his shoes, thinking hard. "And there might've been a poltergeist."

"Well not this time." Lance proclaims, he turns down the next one and grabs the biggest bag of pretzels he can get his hands on. "Just pretzels and shrimp." Lance throws it into the basket, most likely breaking half of the pretzels.

"The hell is that?" Dean asks, pointing at the shrimp. "It looks like someone's insides. I would know."

"It probably is." Keith shrugs shoving his hands deeper into his pockets. "But we'll eat it anyway, and most likely enjoy it." Keith takes out the third box of popcorn Lance added to the cart and put it back on the shelf receiving a pouty face.

"Jeez, you fucking wendigo." Dean mutters, grabbing the popcorn and putting it back.

"It's seafood, ok? My mom loved shrimp." Lance says as they go into the candy aisle, Lance smiles wider. "And I love sugar."

"Isn't that what doctors call gateway drugs?" Cas asks, sure he'd read that somewhere.

"Yeah, they say that." Dean says, grabbing a giant bag of jumbo pixie stix. "But it's not true. Sugar never makes me want drugs again."

"Well that's good." Lance says in his motherly voice. "Drugs are not good, stick with hugs not drugs." Lance says putting at least four bags of peanut butter M&M's in the cart.

"Believe me, I've never agreed more. I OD'd on that shit, and we had to go to the hospital anyway, so it didn't fix anything." Dean says, grabbing more Twix than anyone alive will ever eat. Ever.

"Can we slow down with the junk food please?" Cas cuts in stopping Lance from putting in a large bag of assorted Hershey's chocolates.

"Cas, that's sacrilegious." Dean says, grabbing a six pack of soda.

"No it's not. Sacrilege is making light of holy things, or treating it like it doesn't matter."

"Exactly." Dean agrees, picking up a box full of cookies.

"We'll need more soda than that." Lance says backtracking to the soda.

"Ok seriously, Lance that's enough." Keith says after Lance adds another six pack.

"Nope." Lance adds another one. "Ok that's enough." Lance decides.

Dean looks longingly at the Nutter Butters for a second, then turns away and says, "I'll get the booze." and disappears down a different aisle.

"Get the nutter butters." Keith sighs crossing his arms over his chest. Lance nods and Cas places it in the cart.

"I hope Dean can find us at the checkout" Lance says heading in that direction.

"Don't worry." Cas says. "He probably memorized the layout the minute we walked in here. His dad used to quiz him on it and get him in trouble if he was wrong. Reflex."

"Makes sense, my dad did some stuff like that when I was a kid, and he was alive…" Keith pauses. "Let's just go check out."

They're just finishing putting all their stuff in bags when Dean comes around the corner with no booze at all. He's pale and scared looking. "We need to go. Now." he says, grabbing Keith's and Cas's wrists and pulling them along, trusting Lance to keep up.

"Dean, what's wrong with you?" Lance asks

"Nothing. Just move your asses."

They get all the way out of the store and to the car before Dean just sits down hard on the pavement and wraps his arms around his knees, shaking like a leaf. "It killed him." he says over and over again. "It's the same one. It's got the scar. I gave it to him. It killed him, it killed him, it killed him…" He starts rocking back and forth, hyperventilating.

"Dean, Dean calm down, what's wrong, who killed who, what scar." Lance hands the cart full of groceries off to Keith and sits down next to him.

"Wendigo - Sammy - store - followed - can't-" he puts his head down on his knees trying to pull it together. Good hunters, good soldiers, do not go to pieces. What the hell is the matter with him?

"Shit, we gotta go, as fast as we can. Dean calm down, you're driving." Keith pulls both the boys to their feet and makes a B-line for Baby.

"Yes sir." Dean says out of habit, going into 'hunting mode' and heading over to the car. They all run for the car, pile in the groceries and then themselves and make a get away to the apartment. When they get there Cas takes Dean inside while Keith and Lance unload the bags from the back seat seeing as Dean wouldn't let them open the trunk.

They walk in with their last trip and Dean is curled up in a ball in the corner of the coach, looking so small compared to the rest of the world.

He looks up at them all, clearly not knowing what to say. There's an odd fractured light to his eyes. It's like inside, he's broken into a million tiny shards, but his lifestyle for years is reasserting itself, and he's refusing to completely lose it until this is done and he can do it in private. It's almost like he's losing ground in all the progress he's made, disappearing back behind his armor. Tucking it all away again.

"What exactly happened?" Keith says as Lance and him sit next to him or in front of him on the floor. Cas sitting on the opposite side of the coach as Dean.

"It was- it was-" Tears well up in his eyes. And for a second, it looks like he's about to cry. But then a wall of bullet proof glass seems to drop behind his eyes. He straightens up and clears his throat, his brain going into autopilot, soldier mode, ready to deliver the concise reports with no emotion that his father had always expected from him.

"I saw a Wendigo. The one that killed Sammy. I know, since it had the same scar on its eye. The one I gave to it. It's here." He looks around at them all, and Cas actually scoots a little farther away in fear. Dean's eyes are burning with cold fury. He's seen that from Dean before. It's the kind of cold fury that he knows, in Dean, could kill. "We're gonna gank this son of a bitch." Dean says, his hand tightening around the hilt of his knife in his pocket. "It's gonna be long and slow and painful. And I wanna be the one to do it. I wanna make that sick bastard scream."

"Ok, we need a plan, and probably cool outfits." Lance says with a look in his eyes that says he wants to kill whatever hurt Dean this way.

ok, I know that was a short chapter, but the next one is going to make up for it, I promise! -Sam


End file.
